the deep moans round with many voices

This is really not what I meant to be working on tonight, but when the words come, I try not to argue too hard over their choice of story. It's better to write something than stare at a blank screen in frustration!

Anyway, in chapter 2 of Secrets, my still unfinished retelling of CoS, Ginny meets two original characters -- Apple and Daphne Rumluck, cousins and best friends -- who end up having a significant effect on Ginny's first year at Hogwarts.

On the Hogwarts Express, the Rumlucks mention a 'dragon debacle' that occured over the summer, during which they met Ginny's brother Charlie. Events conspire to keep Ginny from ever getting an explanation, and she soon finds other things to worry about. But I kept wondering what had happened to the Rumlucks, and trying to figure out what Horklumps could possibly have to do with a dragon and a Confundus Charm.

This is the story of Daphne and Apple's visit to the Romanian dragon reserve. It's ridiculously self-indulgent, but I have a weakness for characters who use insults as a way of affirming their affection for each other, and I'm still working out how to write humor properly, so...

( The Dragon Debacle, part 2 )

Back to part 1

On to part 3

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In real life news, the three pairs of mail order silver shoes arrived today. Two of them were a dead loss, but the third pair actually works better with my bridesmaid dress than the pair I bought from Target -- they're a more fabric-textured silver and less of a glittery metallic in-your-face-bling silver, for one thing. So tomorrow I'm mailing the two bad pairs back, and on Thursday or Saturday I'll take the other pair back to Target.

In a frantic effort to avoid writing more of the Quidditch scene, last night I worked on "First You Have to Get There" (my AU fifth-year H/G semi-fluffy romance thingy) and a sidefic to Secrets itself. (Come to think of it, "Get There" is also set in the Secretsverse, insofar as it contains the same OCs. It's so much less trouble to keep using them over again instead of inventing new ones every time I want to use Ginny in a story.)

Anyway, back in chapter 2, Apple and Daphne (two of the major OCs in "Secrets," whom Ginny meets on the Hogwarts Express) mention something they call "the dragon debacle" that seems to have occured over the summer before their first year.

This is the story they never got around to telling Ginny.

(Please note that no canon characters, with the sole exception of Charlie Weasley, will appear anywhere in this ridiculously self-indulgent fic.)

( The Dragon Debacle, part 1 )

On to part 2

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Today I'm minding the house and the dog while Lucia, our cleaning lady, comes. With careful management of where the dog is, we can get every room in the house vacuumed; otherwise, we have to shut the dog into one room and write it off for the week. (She hates Lucia with a passion.)