A Writing Genius?
Dec. 19th, 2015 06:56 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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rt_moreloveAuthor/Artist: an_english_girl
Title: A Writing Genius?
Rating & Warnings: K+
Word Count/Art Medium: 1,363
Prompt(s): "It’s entirely up to you what prompt you pick from the list, and how many of them you pick. You can use one, two, three or all thirty (we may think you’re a genius if it is all thirty). What kind of a prompt was that to give a Ravenclaw?!?!
Summary: Why is Dora sitting on the bed surrounded by a sea of old paper?
Notes: Please judge kindly ... I've NEVER tried LJ before! Helpful corrections and guidance deeply appreciated!
A Writing Genius?
“If you are reading this … oh, dear...”
“Dora? What are you doing?” Remus shut the door of their – no, the back bedroom he and Dora currently occupied in the Tonks' house – and stared at his wife. She was sitting on the bed, with her feet propped up on the pillows, surrounded by a sea of crumpled sheets of paper and apparently talking to herself.
“Wotcher! I, uh-” Dora looked round, and a few more sheets drifted off the edge of the bed to join the paper scree-field already spreading across the rug. “I was just putting my feet up. Expectant mothers are meant to, you know,” she added, patting the large bulge under her sweater.
“But-” Remus bent down, carefully picked up enough papers to make a path through to the bed, and put them back in a neat stack beside Dora.
“Oh!” Dora half-blushed, pulled a face at him and turned the tips of her hair pink to match. “Apart from that, I was just making a mess. I do, you know.”
“It looks like you're writing a novel or something,” Remus observed, sitting gently down beside her and rubbing her back.
Dora leaned back into the pressure of his hand. “Nooo...” she said, reaching across to brush his cheek. “I just found an old shoe-box from when I was seized with the desire to be A Writer. I was just looking through them. They are-” she held up a random handful “-pretty hilarious. I must have been about twelve or thirteen, and I thought I was going to be the next magical novelling sensation. Take this: “She spun down the stairs in a deep red velvet dress, that swirled out in a full circle about her. All the boys in the hall stopped and stared at this vision of loveliness...” I'm thinking I was wanting to be pretty and popular, that day.”
“You are,” said Remus sincerely. “And you were, I believe, according to your dad.”
Dora smiled and shrugged at the same time. “Yeah, but the boys all stared because I could turn my hair weird colours … not 'cos I wore deep red velvet dresses.” She considered the paper for a moment. “Of course, if someone did manage to twirl down the stairs at Hogwarts with a skirt flying out in a circle about them, they'd be more likely to get whistles than stares from any boys in the hall below...”
“You would have from Sirius,” Remus agreed. “If he hadn't been thinking all his Christmases had come at once, at least a couple of them.”
Dora laughed, and turned back to the papers in her hand. “This one's imagining we were all muggles … and this is an obsession with the word hygge … five times on half a page, I ask you … what have you got there?”
Remus picked up his neat pile and peered at the loopy school-girl scribble. “Something about an orange sun slanting low across the snow beneath the bare trees-”
“Landscape phase,” Dora muttered.
“One that seems to involve cooking disasters but everything works out okay in the end-”
“That one... where they all sit round the table in their bathrobes drinking hot chocolate and singing 'I'll be home for Christmas'...” Dora groaned disparagingly.
“I like that one,” said Remus defensively. “Then there's a second person narrative, I can't figure what happens in it-”
The author grimaced. “Nothing. It just rambled on and on.”
“-and a three way dialogue beneath a much underlined quote in pink ink: “Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen”, and then this one starts with a piece of poetry. “You don't seem to know, don't seem to care, What your heart is for, No I don't know him anymore.””
"No! No! No!” Dora reached over and snatched the paper out of his hand. “NOT that one! I had a muggle pop song phase! I'd write them at the head of the paper and then the stories below were simply awful! And no, you're not having the next one either!”
She snatched it back before Remus could see more than “It's okay to say you've got a weak spot-” He picked up a different sheet. “This one, I presume, is not a pop song, since it's title is 'Inadequate Plumbing'.”
Dora groaned. “Don't read it! That one was trying to be cleverly humorous! About things that have no survival value in themselves, but “give value to survival”, I think I put. I was going through a very Ravenclaw-ish phase, that week. There's another one round here somewhere about not blaming gravity for falling in love, a la Einstein.”
Remus looked about at the sea of paper. “How did you find the time? Without locking yourself away for hours.”
The author giggled. “I got a DictaQuill the Christmas I was a Second-year. It was supposed to improve the shocking regularity with which I forgot to write home, but I tried using it to do my homework and the Professors made a tremendous fuss – one of the things which got dragged up in the matter of my lacking the ability to behave myself – so I had to bring it home and use it to write stories when I was bored in the holidays instead. That's why so many of them have a Christmas-y theme. I had such big stacks of paper, Dad charmed me an undetectably-expanding shoe box to keep them in. I found it earlier, so I was just looking through it all.” She looked around at the avalanche of paper. “I suppose I should dump the lot. I don't want this one finding them and thinking I was completely mad.” She patted the bulge again.
“They'll be getting such varied tales from everyone, I shouldn't think a few stories will matter,” said Remus. He tried to keep his voice light, away from the nagging thoughts of what people would, oh so undoubtedly, say to their child about him, about their werewolf of a father, but Dora knew. She squeezed his hand.
“They'll say what a brave, kind, loving, funny, terrific person you are. And then he – or she – will look up the table at you at dinner that evening and think nah, Dad's much more wonderful than that! I promise.” Her hair sparkled into gold tips to match the glimmer of mischief in her eyes. “Come on, read another one!”
He reached for the next one, she grabbed for it too, and it became a sort of mad game of Lotto, each snatching for papers and calling out the first bit they could read.
“-the wheel tracks ran up the hill past the little old cottage-!”
“-first snow had fallen and icicles hung thickly from the eaves-!
“-the holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown-!”
“-he came on as a reluctant Deus ex machina-!”
“-she would never have expected such a thing to happen at the Auror Christmas party-!”
“-he turned the key in the lock and opened the door. To his horror, he saw-!”
“-in a moment of weakness, she threw herself at him-!”
Dora matched the word to the deed for that one, and they landed in a laughing heap on top of the now flat shoe-box. “I would always rather be happy than dignified,” she quoted happily, sitting up from the nest of squashed paper. She reached out and pulled Remus up too. “You know the saying there are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think the same might apply for husbands?” She looked at Remus with a very bad imitation of a demure expression and raised one finger warningly. “Don't go saying 'this is … not the moment', like you did in the hospital wing.”
“I wasn't going to,” Remus protested.
“You frowned.”
“Because I was thinking that right now, I'm entirely with McGonagall and Dumbledore on the matter.”
She leaned forwards, possibly aiming to give him a peck on the cheek. The fact that she sort of missed has almost nothing to do with this story, and now would probably be a good time to leave them.
~:~
Title: A Writing Genius?
Rating & Warnings: K+
Word Count/Art Medium: 1,363
Prompt(s): "It’s entirely up to you what prompt you pick from the list, and how many of them you pick. You can use one, two, three or all thirty (we may think you’re a genius if it is all thirty). What kind of a prompt was that to give a Ravenclaw?!?!
Summary: Why is Dora sitting on the bed surrounded by a sea of old paper?
Notes: Please judge kindly ... I've NEVER tried LJ before! Helpful corrections and guidance deeply appreciated!
A Writing Genius?
“If you are reading this … oh, dear...”
“Dora? What are you doing?” Remus shut the door of their – no, the back bedroom he and Dora currently occupied in the Tonks' house – and stared at his wife. She was sitting on the bed, with her feet propped up on the pillows, surrounded by a sea of crumpled sheets of paper and apparently talking to herself.
“Wotcher! I, uh-” Dora looked round, and a few more sheets drifted off the edge of the bed to join the paper scree-field already spreading across the rug. “I was just putting my feet up. Expectant mothers are meant to, you know,” she added, patting the large bulge under her sweater.
“But-” Remus bent down, carefully picked up enough papers to make a path through to the bed, and put them back in a neat stack beside Dora.
“Oh!” Dora half-blushed, pulled a face at him and turned the tips of her hair pink to match. “Apart from that, I was just making a mess. I do, you know.”
“It looks like you're writing a novel or something,” Remus observed, sitting gently down beside her and rubbing her back.
Dora leaned back into the pressure of his hand. “Nooo...” she said, reaching across to brush his cheek. “I just found an old shoe-box from when I was seized with the desire to be A Writer. I was just looking through them. They are-” she held up a random handful “-pretty hilarious. I must have been about twelve or thirteen, and I thought I was going to be the next magical novelling sensation. Take this: “She spun down the stairs in a deep red velvet dress, that swirled out in a full circle about her. All the boys in the hall stopped and stared at this vision of loveliness...” I'm thinking I was wanting to be pretty and popular, that day.”
“You are,” said Remus sincerely. “And you were, I believe, according to your dad.”
Dora smiled and shrugged at the same time. “Yeah, but the boys all stared because I could turn my hair weird colours … not 'cos I wore deep red velvet dresses.” She considered the paper for a moment. “Of course, if someone did manage to twirl down the stairs at Hogwarts with a skirt flying out in a circle about them, they'd be more likely to get whistles than stares from any boys in the hall below...”
“You would have from Sirius,” Remus agreed. “If he hadn't been thinking all his Christmases had come at once, at least a couple of them.”
Dora laughed, and turned back to the papers in her hand. “This one's imagining we were all muggles … and this is an obsession with the word hygge … five times on half a page, I ask you … what have you got there?”
Remus picked up his neat pile and peered at the loopy school-girl scribble. “Something about an orange sun slanting low across the snow beneath the bare trees-”
“Landscape phase,” Dora muttered.
“One that seems to involve cooking disasters but everything works out okay in the end-”
“That one... where they all sit round the table in their bathrobes drinking hot chocolate and singing 'I'll be home for Christmas'...” Dora groaned disparagingly.
“I like that one,” said Remus defensively. “Then there's a second person narrative, I can't figure what happens in it-”
The author grimaced. “Nothing. It just rambled on and on.”
“-and a three way dialogue beneath a much underlined quote in pink ink: “Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen”, and then this one starts with a piece of poetry. “You don't seem to know, don't seem to care, What your heart is for, No I don't know him anymore.””
"No! No! No!” Dora reached over and snatched the paper out of his hand. “NOT that one! I had a muggle pop song phase! I'd write them at the head of the paper and then the stories below were simply awful! And no, you're not having the next one either!”
She snatched it back before Remus could see more than “It's okay to say you've got a weak spot-” He picked up a different sheet. “This one, I presume, is not a pop song, since it's title is 'Inadequate Plumbing'.”
Dora groaned. “Don't read it! That one was trying to be cleverly humorous! About things that have no survival value in themselves, but “give value to survival”, I think I put. I was going through a very Ravenclaw-ish phase, that week. There's another one round here somewhere about not blaming gravity for falling in love, a la Einstein.”
Remus looked about at the sea of paper. “How did you find the time? Without locking yourself away for hours.”
The author giggled. “I got a DictaQuill the Christmas I was a Second-year. It was supposed to improve the shocking regularity with which I forgot to write home, but I tried using it to do my homework and the Professors made a tremendous fuss – one of the things which got dragged up in the matter of my lacking the ability to behave myself – so I had to bring it home and use it to write stories when I was bored in the holidays instead. That's why so many of them have a Christmas-y theme. I had such big stacks of paper, Dad charmed me an undetectably-expanding shoe box to keep them in. I found it earlier, so I was just looking through it all.” She looked around at the avalanche of paper. “I suppose I should dump the lot. I don't want this one finding them and thinking I was completely mad.” She patted the bulge again.
“They'll be getting such varied tales from everyone, I shouldn't think a few stories will matter,” said Remus. He tried to keep his voice light, away from the nagging thoughts of what people would, oh so undoubtedly, say to their child about him, about their werewolf of a father, but Dora knew. She squeezed his hand.
“They'll say what a brave, kind, loving, funny, terrific person you are. And then he – or she – will look up the table at you at dinner that evening and think nah, Dad's much more wonderful than that! I promise.” Her hair sparkled into gold tips to match the glimmer of mischief in her eyes. “Come on, read another one!”
He reached for the next one, she grabbed for it too, and it became a sort of mad game of Lotto, each snatching for papers and calling out the first bit they could read.
“-the wheel tracks ran up the hill past the little old cottage-!”
“-first snow had fallen and icicles hung thickly from the eaves-!
“-the holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown-!”
“-he came on as a reluctant Deus ex machina-!”
“-she would never have expected such a thing to happen at the Auror Christmas party-!”
“-he turned the key in the lock and opened the door. To his horror, he saw-!”
“-in a moment of weakness, she threw herself at him-!”
Dora matched the word to the deed for that one, and they landed in a laughing heap on top of the now flat shoe-box. “I would always rather be happy than dignified,” she quoted happily, sitting up from the nest of squashed paper. She reached out and pulled Remus up too. “You know the saying there are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think the same might apply for husbands?” She looked at Remus with a very bad imitation of a demure expression and raised one finger warningly. “Don't go saying 'this is … not the moment', like you did in the hospital wing.”
“I wasn't going to,” Remus protested.
“You frowned.”
“Because I was thinking that right now, I'm entirely with McGonagall and Dumbledore on the matter.”
She leaned forwards, possibly aiming to give him a peck on the cheek. The fact that she sort of missed has almost nothing to do with this story, and now would probably be a good time to leave them.
~:~
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