First: HBP trailers. Haha, serious business first, as always. But honestly, found them a little unsettling. I mean, there's the obvious "Tom-Riddle-is-a-bebe-pyromaniac" unsettling. But there's also the fact that, um, well. This is the penultimate movie! And once the films are done, there is nothing else Pottery to look forward to! I mean, I realise the fandom is great and giant like a really big mushroom, but... I don't know, I'm probably just feeling this way because mistful  just finished her last fandom work ever, and she was one of my favorite HP writers, and also kind of a Big Deal, apparently. Either way, fanfiction doesn't trump canon. ... Actually, I could probably be persuaded to make an exception. Gah, I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say anymore.

On the plus side, it is going to be a RIDE OF JOY. HBP is not my favorite of the seven, but it's still Potter, isn't it? Besides, It's got Malfoy-angst, and Stalker!Harry, and Kreacher and what more could a girl ever wish for?

Hokay. So! In the past, I have written stuff! I've got a bit of a neurosis about having stuff documented, so I'll probably put a whole lot of old stuff up here so I know it's safe and sound on the Internets, no matter what I manage to inflict upon my memory stick, hee. Hm. Present Me's not sure how much of Past Self's stuff will be posted, but we'll start with these.

Fandom: none
Synopsis: 11 x 100 words, snapshots of lives.
Length: 1100 words (shocker!)

<lj-cut text="Phrases">Defence: Started these in February 2006 (nonsense, no one was alive back then!) for a writing contest. They're 11 drabbles, more of a game to me than Serious Work, so I'm pleased that some turned out okay, and unsurprised about the ones that didn't.
Oh, and the title is because that was the document name--this will be a theme, I < master of titles.

Phrases

The line of her shoulder dropped into her arm. His pencil tried to follow it, but on paper it seemed much less smooth. He frowned at the light line.

“Having trouble?”

He didn’t have to look up to see the smile in those bright eyes, but he did anyways. There were some things a boy just couldn’t get tired of.

“You’re awfully hard to capture, you know.”

She shrugged, and he couldn’t help but stare at the way the muscles in her arm shifted. Perfection in a pink sleeveless shirt. “Sorry.”

He smiled and turned back to the page. “Forgiven.”

*

His face tried on a few expressions before it found one like a smile. “Where to?”

She shook her head. At least one of them could manage a genuine smile. “Now, now, that would be telling.”

Thinking back, he couldn’t remember what he had said next. He knew for certain the girl had replied, “A year, maybe two or three if it’s good.” And then, scooping up her bag, she’d chuckled, said, “I’ll come back for you if it’s really good.”

With an airy waved goodbye and a flash of a blue coat, she was gone.

And he’s still waiting.

*

She wriggled like heat haze whenever they tried to tickle her. Arms, legs, hands, feet, all squirming and worming their way out from under her siblings. She could escape three tickle attacks out of three, and none of them knew quite how she managed it. There was certainly no grace or co-ordination to her movements, just a frantic sort of “be everywhere at once” flail that never failed to get her free.

“Eeheeheehee! Lemmego, lemmego, lemmego, lemmego!”

“Never!”

“We won’t give up!”

“Hold still, sis!”

It didn’t stop them from trying. It was just so good to hear her laugh.

*

“Criminally tactless.”

He whirled around, startled. The most intelligent thing he could come up with was “What?”

The tall girl flopped down on the couch beside him. “You heard me. Criminally tactless, that’s what you are.” She flicked her braid at him. “ ‘You’re ugly’? Ought to be punishable by law.”

He rolled his eyes. “Tactless? This from the girl who marches in and yells at me in the middle of my show.” He eyed her. “You’re lucky it was commercials. If you’d interrupted an episode I would’ve had to kill you.”

She laughed. “In your dreams, boy. What’s on?”

*

Hope is the cruellest joke God ever played on mankind. She had come to that conclusion long ago, after the first time she’d broken her hand. After all, what kind of God let the people he created believe lies (I’ll play again, it’ll be like before, the bones’ll heal good as new) then smash them down with the truths he hadn’t let them know about before? She hadn’t known the bones would set funny, she hadn’t known her reach would diminish a whole tone, she hadn’t known her career would vanish in a crack of bone…

But she’d still hoped.

*

Sex was okay, but he loved flirting.

“This seat taken, beautiful?”

There was something about the quick back-and-forth, the smiles and blushes on their faces, and the way he felt perfectly out of control that got his spirits going like nothing else.

“I’m the luckiest guy in this room, you know.”

More of a rush than sky-diving or running for your life, as he well knew. It was just so easy for him.

“You’re not talking to any of the others.”

A wink here, a little smirk there, a compliment and you’re off and away.

“No, no, it’s on me.”

*

A loose sheet of newspaper flicks its way down the street.

“City tumbleweed,” she remarks. She pulls her old coat around herself a little more firmly. Autumn is a tricky season—people tend to hold on to the hope of summer long after it fades out of reach.

“Mm.” He nods sagely under his hat. “You know, most people just call it trash.”

She snorts. “Most people are too realistic for their own good.”

“Thank goodness you aren’t one of them,” he says dryly.

The air has a fierce October nip to it, so they shrug back into the building.

*

A crowded sort of privacy was guaranteed by the bustling hallways. Almost nobody noticed the girl and her friend, heads bowed away from the others in the hall, words intended only for each other darting out of their mouths.

“If we tell them it’s for school,” he started suggesting, shying away from a bulky backpack threatening his head.

“They’ll never believe us.” She ducked under an outstretched arm. “What if we just tell them what we’re planning?”

He sidled around an open locker and shook his head. “They’ll find out soon enough. We can wait until then.”

She laughed. “Sure.”

*

Creamer bloomed into his tea. He watched it swirl morosely and sighed. Tea after a good day wasn’t nearly as nice as tea before a good day. Now the day-joy was gone and the night-gloom was starting to set in. He always found it hard to feel good when the sun was down; the moon seemed to like eating flightiness as much as it liked eating heat. Unfolding himself from his rickety chair, he drew the curtains shut. He picked up his cooling tea with both hands and walked back to his bedroom. He could wait for the sun there.

*

It looked like joy, but it feels like pain. Restless fingers flick open the locket’s catch for just one more glimpse. A pair of faded faces, laughing at the years in between then and now. He winces at that laughter—they’d both been so young then. Alone, he is so old now. He knows it, every time he looks at the bittersweet embodiment of remembrance in his hand. It’s sealed in a tiny frame, locked in a tiny case, and belongs in a tiny box in his pocket, but its weight is crushing. And he can’t get rid of it.</lj-cut>

Fandom: none
Synopsis: Every Thursday night, she goes and enjoys some live entertanement.
Length: 1151 words

<lj-cut text="Piano Man">Defence: This is from a bit over a year ago, I think. I think. I'm really hazy on the timeline for this one, but it doesn't really matter that much. I keep thinking I need to put in section divisions or something along those lines, but every time I start to I second-guess myself. So you get the choppy-in-itself, not-on-purpose version! What a treat.

Piano Man

She’d been fascinated with him for months now, ever since she’d started coming to this bar. He was Tony’s Thursday night live entertainment, and they paid him in booze. Bailey’s, usually, and nobody knew why.

    On first glance, he was a bit of a sad figure. Not that tall to begin with, he’d sit slumped over at the old piano for most of the night, hardly looking up or around at all. He looked like his parents had been from everywhere, with tanned-dark skin, dark brown, almost oriental-looking eyes, and a nose that didn’t quite fit. Not a real looker, maybe, but God, could he play that piano. At the start of the evening, his hand would be put to a glass as often as to the keys, but after the first hour or so, he’d forget whatever he was drinking and play. And he did. Play, that was. It always seemed like he enjoyed it, despite the distant expression in his face. Jazz, Beethoven, ragtime, whatever the dish of the day was, he served it with expertise and grace. His fingers dipped and skimmed and bobbed and weaved over the keys. It was dizzying to watch, sometimes. Then, just as suddenly, there the chord was, there sounded the notes, unself-conscious and firm.

    The first night, she’d just watched and listened, soaking up the experience. It had been a long day at work, the time nearly eight o’clock before she could leave the office. When she finally found she could escape, she’d gotten into the car and driven aimlessly for a while, just looking for somewhere to be. The bar hadn’t actually called out to her or anything, but there was a parking spot open right in front of it, with an hour or two left on the meter. She’d taken it as a sign. She remembered being apprehensive about the soap-smeared and greying chalkboard announcing “LIVE ENTERTANMENT” but tentatively pushing open the door despite her misgivings. All her doubts vanished within moments of entering. She’d gotten something to drink, and sat down at a table, a little ways away from the piano. That night, it had been a classical night, the pianist laying into some of the greats with focussed abandon. The music had drilled through her post-work stupor faster than any coffee she had ever tried. She could still recall driving home (after midnight? Surely not, it had only felt like an hour, maybe two) humming some sonatina or another with a big goopy grin on her face.

    That one night was all it had taken to get her hooked. Every Thursday since then, she’d gone to Tony’s armed with a twenty dollar bill and a bit of reading to catch up on. Normally, she wouldn’t even think of reading in a bar, but Tony’s was, well, different. In a previous incarnation, this building had been a café—not an impersonal franchise, but a family-owned sanctuary. After Tony had inherited it (she learned) he had decided to go in a different direction, trading baristas for barstools, but the place retained some of the essential feel of a café—warm, somehow. From the outside, you had to admit, it was a hole in the wall. There was absolutely nothing redeeming about the dust-smeared brick or the dirty windows. It was hard to read the sign above the door, since what used to be an awning now served as a ripped canvas curtain, semi-obscuring the lettering so that passersby couldn’t read the whole of the sign from just one angle. Tony sometimes said he’d fix it, but he never seemed to care enough to do it. After all, it was the regulars he loved, and they didn’t need a sign to read ‘haven’.

    Inside, though, the place was almost nice. The pair of worn-in leather chairs, with a couch to match, two or three wooden tables about the place. The bar itself wasn’t bad, either. The top was plain polished wood, with the look of a surface that had seen more than its fair share of rags. The bar was long, though, with a dozen tauntingly tippy stools, barely manageable if you tucked a little pack of matches or sugar underneath (or if you were just too drunk to care). Otherwise, they were perfectly maddening.

    If you took it as a whole, however, this bar was perfect, the flaws vanishing in a welcoming wave of sound.

    And week after week, she came here alone. Somewhere in the basement level of her mind, she thought that if she brought somebody just for the sake of show-and-tell, the magic of the music would turn brittle and shatter. This last fairy tale was the only one she allowed herself now, the others (with titles like ‘husband’, and ‘glamour’) long since washed away under the mundane tide.

    But here, in a dim bar with its bright pianist, everything seemed a little more live. Live—the piano was live, making sound spark off of every surface. Its music was an odd contrast to the bar itself, but somehow, somehow they fit, the two of them. The room softened the edges of the songs, the beginnings, the rests, the ends. It filled in gaps with smoke and dying lightbulbs. However, the music played off of the room, teased the glasses into gleaming brighter, tickled the window’s single crack into winking almost good-naturedly.

    When she spoke to him, her voice sounded more clearly in the room, braided into the sound like the pianist had intended that she speak, just then, in just that way. Never rambling, existentialist monologues. She didn’t like the idea. But she would make comments, mention the book she was reading, the way she had tripped on her way to work the other day, and never feel the pressure of an expectant audience. Her words, like every other sound in the room, became a part of the music, gloriously entwined in it. Along with the clink of glasses from the bar, the murmur (and occasional shout) of the other patrons, everything that could be heard there seemed like it was meant to be heard. Somehow, that made it easier for her to tell him things that she wouldn’t have told anybody else. Simply the feeling that it was preordained that she should talk. She wasn’t overly religious—she went to the United Church down the block, just Christmas and Easter—but this sound and this feeling were things she could really put her faith into. She sometimes thought that the only reason she believed in it was that she knew that it would continue to be, regardless of her belief. It didn’t rely on her faith, her loyalty, or her.

    She told him all this, one night. She didn’t know if he’d listened or not, if he cared or not, but she’d spoken the words; as always, it seemed they were meant to be spoken.</lj-cut>

Fandom: none
Synopsis: I've always thought this must be somebody's job, somewhere.
Length: 1055 words

<lj-cut text="Making a Living">Defence: Also submitted this one for that contest in 2006, but it's undergone a face-lift since then. I have to admit, the idea makes me smile. In a let's-make-people-miserable sort of way.
Weird style for this one, too! Dialogue gives me trouble, so I just wrote one half of it, cheater that I am.

Making a Living

Please, don’t get me wrong, it’s not really a personal thing. Actually, it’s very impersonal. I’ve got a system.

Well, I guess. But you’re not going to like it…

Notes? Sure, it can’t hurt.

So, as you know, what I do for a living is pretty cold. I’m employed by various people to make the lives of various other people miserable. Which is an okay job, all things considered. I usually get a hefty fee, I’m good at the work, and I get a place in the warm, and that’s what it’s all about. If somebody asks me what I do, I usually say I’m a special human relations consultant, and far out of their price range. There are more people in my line of work than you’d probably think. We just don’t… advertise. Word of mouth is the best, you see. After all, you heard of me, dincha?

Haha, well, believe me, there is a difference in quality in our services. See, no matter what the final result is there are so many, ah, disagreements on the best route to do the actual work. Broadly speaking, there are four main points of view.

The first, which I disagree with, is to take away the big happinesses in their lives, all at once. It’s a very drastic thing to do, since the biggest things in people’s lives tend to be, well, other people, and I do dislike getting rid of people. It’s terrible for the old conscience, you know. Plus, suddenly losing all the influential things in life can have dreadful effects. The targets end up having permanent psychological damage, and that makes them totally useless, and what use is that, eh?

Sorry. I don’t usually talk about my line of work with anybody other than potential clients, so this is a bit of a foreign experience.

Wait, you’re not a potential client, are you??

Right, good. Just checking. After all, this is hardly the conversation I’d have with a client.

The next school of thought is that you should still eliminate the big things in their lives, but do it gradually, so they can lean on the little happinesses. I don’t completely agree with this, either. In some cases it may work, but it’s usually, hm, better not to get rid of the big happinesses. I mean, without them to give a life shape, people just sort of go to pieces. It’s awful to witness, really. Doing it gradually doesn’t help either, unless you have a decade or two. So inconvenient.

Of course it happens. At the moment I’m working on a few jobs, one I started three years ago and a new one in May. They’re going fairly well, but I’ve run into some stalls along the way. You usually do. People are remarkably… Oh, something. I’ll get back to it.

Now we come to the methods I prefer. The third is that we get rid of the target’s small happinesses, all of them, all at once. This is surprisingly effective, but there are problems with it, too, mainly that this is a terribly difficult endeavour. You wouldn’t believe how many little things people enjoy! Chocolate ice cream, the colour of their bedroom walls, their fishtank, going on the playground swings when nobody’s watching… .It’s really quite difficult to remove all traces of all those things from someone’s life without substantial amounts of money and influence.

That’s why I prefer the final method. Small happinesses, long time. Over a period of about five years, I systematically go through the little things that improve a target’s mood. I find and eliminate them, or at least make them much more difficult to come by. For example, Target 62 liked buying a Twix bar from the office vending machine for the ride home. I called the company head to inform him that hooligan kids were rocking the vending machine to get Twixes, and the candy bars were falling like rain. I suggested replacing Twixes with Reese’s Pieces. Target 62  was allergic to peanut butter. The  company took some time coming round to the idea—I actually had to get my neighbor’s kids to tip the candy machine a bit to help convince them, can you imagine—but in the end, they got there. So that was one less thing on Target 62’s list.

Well, I have to. How would you go about this sort of thing without a list?

I realise it’s cold, but—

Yes, and that’s why—

Did you want to finish your notes or not?

Fine. Shall I continue where I left off?

Wonderful. I follow the last two methods because, despite the inconvenience and many difficulties, they work the best. Let’s do a metaphor, shall we? If you think about somebody’s life as a brick wall, a short one with big blocks and some mortar in-between, it makes sense. See, taking away the big things—job, family, lover—is like taking away the bricks. Even without some bricks, you can end up with the skeletal semblance of a wall, even if it’s a useless one. Also, it’s human nature to replace the big things when they go missing. Strange, but true. If you get fired, you don’t sit around moping. You go get a new job. Who knows why, but human beings are determined to pick up the pieces and move on. And they can find comfort in the smallest things, quite remarkable. Removing the big bits of their life, in the end, is not the way to go. They can always focus on the little ups in their life, block out the big picture and keep going. But if you take the mortar out, the big blocks just knock against each other and end up in a pile. The human is still left, but most of the person is gone, got it?

Mhm. Pretty much.

Well, the main delay I run into is when the target replaces things. Humans are so dashed resilient, you know? If you remove the swings at the park, they play on the slide. It just makes things so much more difficult. If only people were more attached, more sentimental. It’s hard sometimes.

You learn to cope, though. I’m good at what I do—one of the best. So, if you ever… I don’t know. Right. See you around.</lj-cut>