Abandoned Fic -- The Second Lot

[lavanya_six]

For every fanfic project I publish, there are a dozen that don't make it off the ground. Sometimes it's because the story isn't strong enough to survive. Other times it's because there's just too much research needed to be done to make it any decent -- research that takes time I don't have with life and my current fanfic projects. Below the cut is a sampling of those half-dozen projects from across several fandoms. Just a warning, these are un-beta'ed and unfinished. What you're reading are only the scenes I finished.

TITLE: Beer Money
SUMMARY: Remus Lupin rued the day Sirius learned he could make money by wanking.
RATING: T+

-=-==-3=-=--=-==--=-==-=-=-=-

Merlin, realized Remus, covertly studying the austere waiting room, every painting here is of a sailing ship. You think they would hang at least one battleship for variety's sake.

It wasn't that he objected to paintings of skippers, cutters, and yachts on principle. True, the naval life was no comrade to Remus Lupin, but he bore no hard feelings to the waters of the world. He'd befriended Peter as they commiserated on their mutual seasickness the night they floated across the lake to Hogwarts. And while he himself might not cut a dashing figure in a swim suit, if the ocean could inspire Homer and Melville the way that they had then Remus figured there must be something upright to it.

Still, there was something oddly perverse about so much naval paraphernalia hanging on the waiting room walls of a sperm donor clinic.

The clock on the wall read 11:17am. Sirius had been inside for nearly an hour. Surely it can't take that long. Remus shifted in his hard plastic seat, relieving his half-asleep buttocks, and for the nth time the last few weeks cursed the name of Lily Evans.

=--==-3=--=-=

It had been a Friday and that meant Pub Night.

In theory, it was meant as a time for the Marauders to keep up with one another post-Hogwarts. The boys could blow off steam about women, work, and, more and more, the War. At least until they all became utterly and truly pissed.

"No, no," insisted Lily, stifling her own laughter. "I'm serious. They actually pay men to wank off into a cup. Then when a lady wants to have a kid they defrost it and then she—"

"She what?" asked James. "Pours it in?"

"Actually, they usually use a baster."

Everyone roared at that image. Peter, giggling and with rosy cheeks, fell over in his seat. James made a face. Remus chuckled again and moved to sip his beer but stopped when he caught sight of a twinkle in Sirius' eye.

"Really?" asked Black.

-=-==-3=-=-=-

Remus decided to keep silent on the issue, not bringing it up for fear that any disapproval would only feed Sirius's commitment to aid infertile couples in the London Metropolitan Area. The topic never came up again and Remus breathed a sigh of relief as his friend's attention moved on to the latest shining bit that dangled in front of his eyes...

...at least until two weeks later when Remus checked their apartment's Muggle mail to find a suspiciously anonymous-looking package addressed to one "S. White".

Remus closed his eyes and counted to ten before walking back into their apartment. Clutching the package to his chest, he stepped into the bathroom and said, "This is a shitty way to get back at your parents, Sirius."

Sirius, an indistinct figure hidden behind a cheap shower curtain, broke off his rousing rendition of I Saw McGonagall in Her Knickers. "Mooney," he said, voice firm against the roar of streaming water and hot steam, "I don't think you understand the situation. They're paying me to wank."

"Is five pounds really worth your dignity?"

"Money. To. Wank."

"That's only a Galleon, Padfoot."

"A Galleon to wank." Sirius chuckled. "Ah... Muggles. Come with me. We can get two Galleons. To wank."

"I doubt a pair of Muggles would be happy to find their baby turning into a wolf."

Sirius's happy humming petered off.

"Then think of the child!" he shouted.

Sirius paused at the stove, hand still wrapped around the kettle handle.

"For God's sake, Padfoot, have you forgotten what they do with these donations? You could have a son or daughter running around Muggle London this time next year!"

-=-==-3=-=-=-

Two years later, on an otherwise unremarkable afternoon in November 1981, Remus Lupin returned to the clinic.

He strode through the clinic's front door, silencing its bell with a flick of his wand. It wasn't strictly necessary. No one in the waiting room would have looked up at him, not with a Notice-Me-Not charm in action, but it never hurt to be cautious.

That was why he was here, after all.

"You wouldn't want your clients knowing their child's biological father was a mass murderer."

Nice. Stodgy. Dentists. Saggy ass on the bird.

Remus, exasperated, let go of the doctor's mind. Already he could feel the migraine forming.

 

TITLE: Untitled Harry-Hermione murder mystery
NOTES: This was going to be my take on a Harry/Hermione romance, where both Ginny and Ron die in the final battle of Deathly Hollows. Basically, Hermione would have run away to Muggle University for several years while Harry became an Auror under Tonks (who survived but was widowed in the final battle). Then Hermione comes back to the Wizarding World after realizing she can't run from her past, and she and Harry talk with each other for the fist time in several years. There was also going to a murder mystery about someone using exotic magic to kill off former Death Eaters, but I might be recycling that plot into something else so I'll refrain from sharing the details of it. I toyed with the idea of Harry and Hermione ending up not being together at the end of the story, but I was also considering having Harry marry Hermione and taking her name because he wants a fresh start. I think I even have (somewhere in the long-hand legal pad I drafted this whole story on) a scene of them taking their daughter to the Hogwarts Express, but they're not married -- they're just "living in sin" and raising a child as two very damaged friends.
RATING: M

Harry Potter levitated the charmed shaving mirror around his bum, position it just so to produce a proper angle with the mirror in his bedroom loo. The dull red crescent that arced along his left hip and then corkscrewed up along his bum was otherwise difficult to see. Harry's neck and back, themselves crisscrossed with the odd scar, were still too stiff from the Incident for the acrobatics necessary.

This scar was fresh.

Harry reached down and around and traced the knot of scar tissue, grimacing at its permanence. A Knockturn Alley shop owner had gotten the drop on Harry during an Auror raid on the business, blasting him askance with a hex. What might have been fatal instead turned into embarrassment, with three of Harry's fellow Aurors blasting the shop owner into oblivion while Harry end up with only his bum on fire.

Some curse wounds never healed, not properly, so now Harry James Potter found himself stuck with one arse cheek with a decent dent in it. He felt it every time he sat down now.

All those Death Eaters and Dark Lords, and a nobody under arrest for tax evasion is the one that finally ends up taking a piece out of my arse.

Harry snorted at the very thought.

I could have a Muggle doctor take a look at it, he realized. Maybe he could—

"No," he muttered to himself. Harry snatched the floating mirror and set it down on the sink countertop. "Stop being such a wanker."

After all, you can't count every scar.

-==-3-==--==-=-

“Through the Ministry,” she explained, pausing to sip her tea. “They have an old exchange program of sorts via the Muggle Ministry; fake documents, polished CVs, and the like. It was a good opportunity.”

“And now you’re back?”

A flicker in her eyes suggested recognition of the question mark in his last statement. Inwardly, Harry was a tad startled Hermione was so easy to read. Growing up, Harry had so often found himself adrift in the sea of students at Hogwarts, clueless about other people’s feelings – not even understanding that he did not understand other people’s feelings until his Fourth Year, and then only vaguely. Hermione, in contrast, had been the resident expert on matters of the heart.

Harry supposed Auror training helped him come so far. That thought led to a rush of disquiet in his heart. I am NOT interrogating her, he chided himself.

“Yes,” she said. “I called in a marker with Shacklebolt.” Harry watched as she ran a slim finger around the plastic rim of her chai tea. “It’s blatant nepotism, I know, but it’s hard to find an In at the Ministry if you don’t know someone high up.”

“Must keep the Muggleborns out.”

Harry looked at her – really looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “It does.”

The shop’s front door swung open, letting in an arctic blast alongside two young men bundled up against the elements.

Hermione asked, “Do you always do that?”

He blinked at the question. “Pardon?"

“Size people up. You’ve been doing it to everyone who walks in.”

“I have?”

She nodded.

“Ah.” Harry twirled his coffee cup. “Auror training.”

“I figured. What do you see when you look at me?”

“Civilian.”

Her lips quirked at one end. “Civilian? What else do you see?”

Harry untangled his scarf, the itching from its wool irritating against his skin. “Not enough, according to Tonks,” he said, hoping to change the subject.

“But you’re... happy?”

Damn it. “I’m well enough. Still a junior Auror, so they keep me busy. Schedule’s hard but I still make due for Teddy when I can.

“What about in your free time?”

“What’s that?” He laughed and smiled at her but the joke fell flat. She wanted an answer. “I had dinner with Dudley last week. Yes, I know. His little girl’s a terror and they’re already expecting another.”

Hermione looked him straight in the eye and asked with a terrible casualness, “So you’re not seeing anyone?”

“No,” he said reflexively. “You?”

“No.”

I should fetch a scone, he thought, but, with great reluctance, squashed the idea. Regardless of what had gone on between them, she was still Hermione – his oldest friend – and he was still a damned Gryfindor!

“I haven’t seen anyone since Ginny,” he lied.

She nodded. “Neither have I.”

Harry relaxed, letting go of a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

“So you said you went to a Muggle school? What was that like?”

Hermione leaned forward, resting her elbows on the edge of the table. “Well,” she began, “the food’s terrible. Do you remember microwaves?”

The word tingled at the back of his mind, dredging up memories of a young Dudley Dursley and his foul-smelling after-school snacks. “You don’t put tinfoil in them.”

Hermione smiled. “It makes food taste terrible.”

“Never had any, myself. Not that I can recall.”

“You aren’t missing much. I only used it when I was too tired or lazy to make dinner after class.”

=-=-3-==-=-

 

"I don't." 

"What?" 

"I don't miss her," he slurred. "Not like I used to. God, Hermione, there are days when I don't even think about Ginny." Harry gripped a long-hanging branch of the apple tree to steady his wobbling knees. "I can't even remember what she was like. She's just Ginny now, s-some bloody girl in photos that everyone talks about. Ginny the Quidditch player. Ginny the daughter. Ginny, Harry's dead girlfriend. 

"Her bedroom doesn't even smell like her anymore."

Harry leaned his temple against the wet, mossy bard of the tree trunk and closed his eyes. His stomached revolted as his mind replayed the last few minutes over and over again. He waited for Hermione to leave. Yet when he opened his eyes, Hermione still stood there, watching him. She said nothing, but the disgusted look on her face was evidence enough.

Harry pushed away from the apple tree and began to slink away, dragging himself through the Weasley's orchard.

(Angst Angst Angst)

"I lied!"

Harry turned around.

Hermione, frozen in place next to the apple tree, stood with her arms wrapped around herself. The moonlight glittered off something wet on her face.

Tears? Why is she crying?

"What?" he called back to her.

"I lied, Harry. There was someone else. After Ron."

"Hermi—"

"After you!" she shouted.

"Wh-what?"

Hermione did not answer. Instead she turned away from Harry and ducked her head.

* * * *

[I think this was supposed to be a scene where Hermione was in a college class, debating another student about Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay or something. It was meant to be the scene where Hermione has a near-breakdown and decides she should be fighting the good fight back in the Wizarding World.]

"I doubt you'd feel the same way if you were the one with the hood on his head."

Gregory smiled at her. "Oh please, you're just some upper-middle class kid, Granger. What do you know about war? You've never gone for want of anything in your life! Clean food, good education, braces... really!  You're in no position to judge the men and women who keep us safe. Or would you rather be walking around in a burqa?"

The classroom around Hermione receded as her fingers clenched into tight, sweaty fists. "Speaking as someone who has been tortured—"

"Uh-huh. Right."

Something snapped inside Hermione, and before she could stop herself she began to speak. "When I was seventeen," she said, cover story be damned, "a woman named Bella took me down into room, chained me to a chair, and started to ask me questions. When I didn't give her the answers she wanted, she started to—"

Gregory snorted in derision. Overhead, one of the fluorescent lights blew out, startling the whole class – save Hermione, who didn't so much as flinch.

"Look at what they did to me! LOOK!" She found herself on her feet, blouse ripped open, scars exposed. One her plain white bra preserved her modesty. "LOOK! And when she and her friends were done they murdered my best friends! LOOK AT ME, GODDAMN YOU!"

* * * *

"I love the Underground," he said. "Sometimes I just spend the whole day riding it around London."

"You do?"

Here Harry tarried, his back flushing at the inadvertent confession. "W-well, yes," he said, looking her in eye. "No one knows who I am. I'm just some bloke. And I get to see so many strange people."

Hermione smiled. "The Underground is good for that much, I'll give you that. The lack of paparazzi must be a plus."

"Merlin, yes."

* * * *

"Professor Snape?!" Hermione looked up from the book. "Harry, why do you have Snape's books?"

The Boy-Who-Lived said, "McGonagall gave them to me."

"Why?"

He ran a hand through his messy, graying hair. "I'm, uh, writing a textbook. For his memorial fund."

"...his what?"

* * * *

TITLE: Tonks femmeslash
SUMMARY: I have no fucking idea what I was doing here. Maybe this was supposed to be some sort of story about her and Remus Lupin both being bisexuals? However, I do like this scene I wrote of Tonks taking Mad-Eye Moody to a Muggle gay bar.



Moody uncapped his flask and raised it to his li—

"Hey!" snapped the bartender, leaning across the divider, making a show of flashing his guns to the ladies assembled. "What the hell do you think yer doin'?!"

"Having a drink," he said, then tipped the hip flask back and took a long, slow draught from it. Moody lowered the flask and wiped his lips on his sleeve. "Meaning no disrespect to your—" he swept his eye across the breadth of the room, studying the dancers and assorted twentysomethings reflected in the bar mirrored backing "—fine establishment, sir, but you never know when someone will try to poison you."

The beefy bartender glared at the old, scared man. "You tryin' to be funny, mate?"

"No. Are you?"

"Oh?" Out of the corner of her eye, Tonks noted two bouncers making a beeline towards them. "Then yer obviously cruisin' for an ass-kickin'!"

Tonks darted forward, placing herself between the men. Putting on her best 'embarrassed and apologetic' face, she said, "Please, I'm so sorry! Please forgive my friend. He's OCD. Like, really! He can't help himself about drinking. Please don't throw us out I just wanted to show him a good time tonight because he doesn't get out of the office much because of, you know, the OCD."

As the bartender eyed her circumspectly, she could feel Moody's hot, sour breath wash over her bare left shoulder and neck. Going by the fact she wasn't in a fistfight already, Tonks knew that the bouncers were hanging back.

Look pretty. Look pretty. Look pretty.

"Yeah, whatever," said the bartender, stepping back. Tonks turned her head and flashed a small, polite smile at the backs of the retreating bouncers. "Just don't do it here. Go an' drink in a booth or somethin', okay? It's company policy but I can turn a blind eye to it that way."

Tonks flashed him a smile. He smiled back. Eat it up, asshole.

* * *

Moody's lip tightened up at one end. "Scars? Aye, sometimes, but I've found nothing drives the witches wild like a pegleg."

Tonks choked on her drink.

ff

TITLE: Untitled Captain Planet / Evangelion fusion
SUMMARY: A crack fic that never got off the ground.

Rei – fire
Asuka – water
Shinji – heart
Touji – wind
Kaworu – earth
Angel – The Smog Monster

"This is my father's work?"

"Yes, Shinji. This is GAIA Headquarters."

* * * *

"Heart?!" exclaimed Shinji. "What kind of lame power is heart?"

"You can control people's minds," noted Dr. Akagi. "Brainwash them into liking you."

"I wish to retract my previous statement."

* * * *

"Chairman Gore won't be pleased," noted Fuyutsuki.

"The old men on SEELE can go to hell."