[Fic] "The Granger Family Reunion" and "Gifts" -- Harry Potter

[edenfalling]

So, a while back I signed up to write a story for the hhr_serendipity thing (contest? challenge? ficathon? whatever), with the prompt "The Granger family reunion." The resulting story, One of Those Days, was actually my third attempt at writing to the prompt. These are my first two tries. The first just wasn't going much of anywhere -- I like it as a scene, but it has no conclusion, no plot, and no point. See for yourself:

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The Granger Family Reunion
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Harry leaned against the wall by the Grangers' dining room window and looked into their back garden. Hermione was marshalling her relatives into setting up the tables, folding chairs, plates, utensils, and all the paraphernalia of a summer picnic. It was amusing, in a way, to watch her order her uncles, aunts, and cousins around with the blithe assumption that of course they'd do what she told them -- but the fact that she was right drained some of the humor.

He sipped his beer and sighed.

"She's something to watch, isn't she?"

Harry turned, startled, to see Mrs. Granger standing in the kitchen doorway, holding a mug of coffee. She looked a bit like an older version of Hermione, but her hair was straighter, sleeker, and darker, and her face was more long than round; she projected an air of severity unless she smiled. She wasn't smiling now. She looked pensive.

"She's inspiring," Harry agreed. In the corner of his eye, he watched the midday sun flash on Hermione's golden-brown hair, and grace her smile as she laughed at something her father said.

"You know, a lot of her confidence is an act," said Mrs. Granger. She walked over to stand beside Harry, watching her daughter. "She's not a natural extrovert, but she's a performer, and she plays her role to the hilt -- trying to hide her insecurities rather than ask for comfort, I suppose. You do realize this."

"Er, yeah?" said Harry. He'd always known Hermione was insecure about things -- nobody who wasn't would've panicked the way she used to about unimportant things like schoolwork -- and he supposed in retrospect that she wasn't half bad as an actress, but her confidence was based on her knowledge and skills, and there was no questioning those. She was the one who figured things out for him and Ron. Even when he argued with her, he was always half-convinced, in the back of his mind, that she was right and he was just letting himself in for trouble.

"What's she have to be insecure about? She's brilliant, she's pretty, she's always ready to help people, she's brave... She's Hermione."

Mrs. Granger laughed. "Oh, I do hope you say things like that to her -- well, you must -- you do her a world of good, Harry. She relaxes around you."

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You see? It just stops. There wasn't any spark there to make me push onward, but if anyone else wants to do something with this as a beginning, be my guest!

The second try is a complete ficlet, but it has almost nothing to do with the original prompt. It's a monologue by Mrs. Granger:

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Gifts
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Hermione was not an easy child to raise.

Oh, she was a joy, don't misunderstand me! But she was always fiercely intelligent and desperate to have her world under control, and that combination made for a girl with deep insecurities, who nevertheless refused any overt offers of help or empathy. She couldn't afford to seem weak, you see, or people would realize that much of her control was an illusion.

In retrospect, I blame myself and William to some extent. We hadn't intended to have a child for another few years, until our practice was better established, and there was... strain, I suppose, would be the kindest way to put it. We argued rather a lot -- politely, of course, never yelling or resorting to physical violence -- but Hermione picked up on the tension. She took to showing off the slightest accomplishment, saying "Look at me, look at me!" all the time, and naturally William and I set aside our quarrels for a moment to exclaim over her.

She learned, I think, that the center of attention is sometimes the safest place to be. She isn't a natural extrovert, but she's a talented performer; she chose the role of child prodigy, the girl with all the answers, and she plays it to the hilt.

What I liked best about her first young man, Ron Weasley, was that he drove her to such distraction that she broke her role. She fumed. She swore. She made an utter fool of herself, to hear her tell the story. She acted, in short, like the teenage girl she was at the time. But love that burns hot often burns fast, and less than a year after they left school, Hermione and Ron parted ways.

She ran through a succession of minor flings after that -- none serious enough to introduce to me and William -- before she settled into a period of concentration on her work. It still surprises me that she dove straight into a career instead of seeking an apprenticeship in one of the more esoteric or scholarly branches of her world, but then, Hermione did inherent William's intensely practical streak. She saw a place where she could do useful work, and she charged forward.

And then, last year, she brought her friend Harry Potter home for supper.

Naturally I'd met Harry before -- like Ron, he was one of Hermione's closest friends, and heavily involved in the war she still refuses to tell us much about -- but this time Hermione stood pressed against his side, and their hands were twined together. And Hermione wasn't tense. She wasn't onstage, screaming "Look at me!" She wasn't watching him or us for subtle cues.

It was like... like... To be honest, I can't think of a good comparison. Like having the nurse lay a wet, wrinkled, squalling baby on my breast. Like seeing the dawn of comprehension when she learned her first word, finally realizing that this sound meant that object. Like watching her walk through a solid wall at age eleven and vanish into a new world. Like opening my hands and letting her fly free.

The tragedy of children is that they grow. They take you for granted, they argue, they reject your advice, they turn their backs, and they leave. The glory is that sometimes they come home and you can see what they built from your gifts.

I think Hermione and Harry may learn that themselves, someday.

I wish them joy.

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I rather like that one, actually. Despite the... the... the vaguely pedantic tone that always sneaks into my stories, particularly my monologues, when I'm not deliberately avoiding it. :-)

[ETA: The slightly revised final version of "Gifts" is now up on AO3!]

Comments

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

I rather like that one, actually. :-)

My reaction to the whole Potter franchise was never more than lukewarm, and has gotten steadily more "Meh" as the series has grown more serious - so much so that I haven't even read the last two.

I mention this so that the fact that these ficlets - both of them - make me sort of smile at the fuzzys and go "awwwww..." is properly appreciated. Part of what makes them work, I think, is as simple as the way they show, they acknowledge just how tightly wound she is under the Goody-Two-Shoes act.

Good job!

Ja, -n

[edenfalling]

I have noticed over the past few years that the more I write fanfiction for a series, the less fanfiction I read for that series, and in some ways, the less enthusiastic I become about the canon material. I think it's the same reason I sometimes cannot face a work of fiction for several months on end and have to binge on things like the history of biological warfare, or a study of feminism in third world countries: if I pay too much attention to the guts of the beast, I stop being able to admire it in motion.

Hermione is an interesting character for me, because she and I share at least half, maybe as much as three quarters of our character/personality traits, and yet we are so different. It interests me to play around with those differences.

(To be perfectly honest, I sneak a lot of the similarities into my version of her backstory. For example, "Fire," my Hermione monologue, contains scary amounts of my childhood, including the 'homo' story... which my own sister told me was too implausible for her to believe. *shakes head* It's a guilty sort of fun to throw my own history at a character and watch how she reacts differently.)

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

I have noticed over the past few years that the more I write fanfiction for a series, the less fanfiction I read for that series, and in some ways, the less enthusiastic I become about the canon material. I think it's the same reason I sometimes cannot face a work of fiction for several months on end and have to binge on things like the history of biological warfare, or a study of feminism in third world countries: if I pay too much attention to the guts of the beast, I stop being able to admire it in motion.

Huh. Interestingly, I find that things work in exactly the opposite way, for me - my urge or interest in writing in a given setting is completely and directly dependant on how much air time it's been getting on my 'entertainment channels,' like the little chibi characters in my head are watching along with me and sit up and go 'But that's not right...'

When I think about it that much, which I usually don't. Makes an interesting contrast with how left-brained I usually think of myself as being. Instead it's - 'Scene, scene... Naruto comes home... talks to... well, Iruka, likely. Oh. Who just slept with Anko.' and then Whisker-brain is slamming open the door to Iruka's apartment and shouting and I'm left scrabbling for my notebook.

Speaking of which, I need to go. ^_^

Ja, -n

[edenfalling]

Interesting. It seems as though your fanfiction writing impulses are more responsive than mine -- that is, you're responding in a fairly immediate fashion to a stimulus from canon. I tend not to even get ideas until they bubble up from the mishmash of god-knows-what-all that stews at the back of my mind, which means that they can be very disconnected from whatever the original stimulus was. There are exceptions -- my Gormenghast story, for example -- and my first piece of fanfiction was a direct response to a number of bad Harry/Ginny romances (I remain convinced that one of the best ways to refute a badly handled pairing is to handle it better oneself), but that intial H/G ficlet also managed to stew around for a couple weeks and become "Secrets," so...

I dunno. I would also put it down to my tendency toward serial obsessions. I get really, really into something for a few days to a few months, after which my attention fades and the obsession dwindles to an interest. It appears that my interest in writing seems to be stronger than my interest in reading, at least as a sustained thing. This may be because in writing, I get to experiment and try new things, whereas in reading, it starts to feel like same-old, same-old. You have to ping me pretty hard to catch my attention with HP fanfic these days; otherwise, no matter how well you write, I'm likely to lose interest and wander off to read about my latest obsession.

[significantowl.livejournal.com]

Oh, that second one is very nice indeed. I'm glad you shared these!

[edenfalling]

Thanks!

[alchymie.livejournal.com]

Actually, both of them are very sweet. You're right, the first one isn't a story per se... it's at best a scene from a story. But the nice thing about writing is that you can create a scene and not use it immediately... and later, some story will need a scene and you'll have that one ready to go.

But the stories' shared idea, that Hermione has chosen the image, the persona, of a bookish know-it-all... that's new, as far as I know. Must give it some serious thought, but I rather incline towards it.

Very nice, Liz.

(Oh, BTW, this is Paracelsus. I took the plunge and got my own LJ account. No longer a Luddite, I. Will you permit me to friend you?)

[edenfalling]

Squee! *friends you*

It's an idea that has probably been in the background of my characterization of Hermione in previous stories, but I hadn't actually pulled it out into the light of day and examined it explicitly. It comes, I think, from my feelings about being the know-it-all bookworm during grade school -- I always felt as though I was on a stage and everyone was watching me, waiting to see if I'd slip and be wrong one time. So I had a persistent feeling that in some senses, I was acting a role... even though I was behaving mostly as I would have anyway.

Eh. Masks take on lives of their own, and nobody is defined completely by only one persona. But Hermione's take-charge answer girl persona interests me, because she's clearly also insecure and she doesn't do particularly well under certain kinds of pressure. So how did she end up with (or why did she choose) a persona that thrusts her into situations where she will face those pressures? This is one possible answer.