The next bit of this.
“I don’t know where to start,” said Sirius. He was staring at the table, at the much-folded scrap of ragged newspaper he had set there. It was half the Prophet’s front page, from a month ago, announcing the disappearance of the Boy Who Lived.
“I still have a few friends in the Aurors,” Remus said. Sirius looked a little better, after a meal, a haircut, clean clothes, and about two hours sitting in the bath while Remus fretted in the next room.
He was still damn near skeletal, and his eyes, when they weren’t fixed on something Remus couldn’t see, were haunted. He hardly spoke, and answered questions in single words when he could.
“No Aurors,” said Sirius. He waved at the paper on the table. “They don’t know anything, or this wouldn’t have run.”
“Still,” said Remus. “If I get a chance, and I can bring it up, I will.”
Sirius nodded. “Fine.”
Tag: fic rec
Five things that unsettle Bilbo Baggins about his travelling companions
1.) The dwarves spar as they journey, in the mornings or evenings, or sometimes when they break for the midday meal. Sometimes they divide into teams, sometimes it’s a massive free-for-all, and not even the brothers and family units among them will help one another. Sometimes one dwarf stands on a rock and the goal is to knock him down and take his place and defend it alone, other times they simply pile into each other and all may use the terrain however they please. Sometimes they all attack Thorin at once, and he holds them off with sword and axe, or sword and the oaken branch that gave him his name, or the sword alone, or barefisted, wrestling and biting and kicking. Sometimes they have one-on-one spars, or two-on-one or small groups against other small groups. No one seems to hold back at all. The company goes around with bruises, groaning as they ride the next day with wrenched muscles, ruefully let each other help staunch a bleeding wound.
“Someone’s going to get killed,” Bilbo had said with certainty after a week of watching this, but Gandalf only smiled.
He gained some perspective when, during an unarmed melee, Balin neatly sidestepped a punch from Dori that smashed the tree behind him to splinters. Because he’s seen dwarves take blows from Dori before, and they always leave bruises that last for days– but never more than that.
Fili wasn’t sparring that day– he was still recovering from the near-drowning– and thus was sharpening his swords next to Bilbo and keeping one eye on the proceedings, yelling out the occasional encouragement or taunt.
“What’re you gawping at there, Mister Baggins?”
“Ori’s never managed to raise a single bruise on any of you,” he said slowly. “What would happen if he struck me?”
“Don’t worry, Gandalf warned us all not to. You Shirelings are a soft little folk, hm? ‘–but they’ll surprise you, Master Dwarf,’ you know how he is.”
“Soft is what you call not having a harder skull than a tree, is it?”
“Couldn’t’ve been a very hard wood,” Fili snorted. “Half-dead, too. Dori’s pulling his punches. He has to, he’s stronger than Dwalin even.” He glanced over at Bilbo, who was still wide-eyed. “You said you’d read a good deal about elves. That you’d studied them. How would you describe ’em?”
“Describe elves? Well… fair, tall. Wise, immortal beings, the Firstborn of the Peoples of Middle-Earth–”
“Well, whether any of that’s true,” interrupted Fili with a bit of a grimace, “we were made by Mahal, not Illuvatar. And Mahal considered it rather more important than being tall, aye, or fair in the eyes of some, that dwarves be tough.”
Of all the things to be proud of, Bilbo thought. But then he supposed they had to be proud of something, if they knew they were not made to be fair or wise or tall or immortal– or given a land like the Shire, with the gifts and the knowledge to till it.
2.) Occasionally they stay at inns, in villages of Men that are apparently friendlier than others. Bilbo has no idea what kind of unseen sign marks them apart, but the dwarves recognize something about them as they pass and Gloin takes out his ledger and abacus and talks to Thorin and Balin and Dwalin in low tones before Thorin announces whether they will enter. Bifur and Bofur bring whatever toys they will have made since the last one, and sometimes a nicely inked scroll by Balin or Ori. Dori might contribute a knitted scarf or hat or mittens or foot-mittens (at which name Fili and Kili fall about laughing and even Gandalf’s mustache wobbles suspiciously). Thorin ties back his hair and disappears into the local forge for the evening. Nori just… disappears.
They share rooms, because there are fifteen of them, and no matter who he rooms with Bilbo has never seen a single dwarf sleep in a bed. The beds are right there, comfortable and inviting, and yet every single member of the company he has seen sleep— which is everyone except Gandalf— strips the sheets and blankets off their bed and carry them into a corner of the room to pile on the floor like a nest.
“Why do you do that?”
“Bad enough we’re on the second floor,” Gloin grumbled. "Sleep raised up off it? No thank you, laddie. We’re far enough away from stone as it is.”
3.) The metal pins go right through their ears! Holes! In their ears! That they punched with needles and let scar around bits of metal that were still in there! And he thought they looked far too regular for birthmarks but they’re self-inflicted, stabbed repeatedly with needles (again!) and stained with dyes that surely cannot be anything other than poisonous, to mark so permanently; what exactly is so wrong with the bodies they were born with?
4.) Bilbo is perfectly familiar with the practice of breaking apart chicken bones to get at the marrow inside. Healthy stuff, that, though you must be careful not to swallow bone splinters. At home, if they had no guests in front of whom good manners must be practiced, his mother would bite down on them rather than bothering to get out the claw crackers. His father would laugh and call her a barbarian.
But the dwarves crack open the bones of sheep with their teeth, crunch down on the leg bones of deer after the meat has been stripped from it. There’s “Mahal made us to be tough” and then there’s having the jaw strength of a pack of wolves, and apparently the table manners to match. It nearly puts him off his dinner.
5.) In full darkness, the dwarves’ eyes widen and gleam like cats’. In that first instant when they come into light again, if Bilbo looks quick enough, their eyes are black nearly edge-to-edge. He strongly dislikes the way it makes him feel like a prey animal among predators.
1.) SERIOUSLY HOW DOES HE WALK EVERYWHERE WITH BARE FEET. SHARP ROCKS. TWIGS. THORNS. SNOW. WHAT IN THE NAME OF MAHAL. GANDALF EXPLAIN YOUR BURGLAR.
GUYS
READ THIS
BEST 5 THINGS/1 THING STORY I’VE EVER READ
a slightly different thing
I’m turning the clock back a little on dogfather with this one. This is set about three years before Padfoot follows Harry home, and is meant to be more traditionally story-shaped. It’s provisionally titled “the black dog.”
I’m not sure if I’m going to post any more of it before it’s done, but I have the beginning and I also have no chill so here it is so far:
Best tags
#the dogfather#remus lupin#sirius black#the black dog#sometimes when the spirit moves you you just have to write 900 words of Remus Lupin being anguished#i suspect the rest of this story is going involve the two of them being horrendously 23 years old at each other#while also being huge seething messes of emotion that don’t eat enough to keep weight on#just. like. 2 sad angry burlap sacks full of gardening tools. tryin to hug it out and failing
AU where…
Aang died with the air nomads.
The next two Avatars, from water and earth, live without ever knowing who they are.
Zuko still spoke out at the meeting, he still refused to fight his father in the Agni Kai.
Zuko was banished, and in his search to find the Avatar, earth bends.
He is the Avatar and doesn’t know what to do about it.
Okay but consider:
Zuko, punching the air: “I MUST FIND THE AVATAR!”
*rock goes flying*
Zuko, waving his arms for emphasis: “IT IS THE ONLY WAY”
*strong wind knocks over grunt in the background*
Zuko, stomping dramatically: “TO RESTORE MY HONOR!”
*deck behind zuko becomes covered in ice*
Iroh, stroking his beard: “…. hmmmmmm…”
And Iroh just decides to mess with him and just goes “Well, I suppose we should start searching” and Zuko doesn’t find out until later in the episode
THIS is the version of the story I want to read!
There are at least two fics that I’ve been able to find that take this premise and run with it. There are probably more.
Summary: "It was an accident.“ That was what Zuko had said to his crew when he used an element he hadn’t been meant to. He wasn’t the Avatar. The Avatar was supposed to be in the Earth Kingdom, hidden by its walls. Unless the old Avatar had died long ago … and had already been replaced sixteen years ago. AU.
Avatar Zuko by the_cloud_whisperer
Summary: Less than eighty years after Roku’s death, the Avatar has returned to the Fire Nation, born to Prince Ozai. Everything seems poised for the Fire Nation to take over the world, except for a few minor details, namely that Ozai has unknowingly banished and alienated his son, the Avatar. A retelling of the events of A:tLA, in which Zuko is the Avatar, Azula is his twin, and Aang is still the last Airbender.
Okay but imagine a Viktor Nikiforov who is told from day one that he’s beautiful and brilliant at skating, but that’s about it. He’s talented but an airhead; he’s forgetful and can’t remember dates and names and can barely pass history or geography; he’s easily distracted and takes forever to finish one book, and he’s awful, awful at arithmetic; he has to count 2+5 off his fingers, and as a kid in the 90s (born in ‘88) he’s discouraged (or even banned) from using a calculator so he barely scrapes by from grade to grade. He’s lucky he can rely on his figure skating career, his teachers tell his guardians, because goodness knows he doesn’t really have the brains for anything else.
He’s lucky he’s pretty and charming, they tell him, over and over again. He’s lucky he’s good at skating, say his teachers, his coaches, magazines, fans, lovers, friends. When he finally finishes school his grades are so abysmal no one even considers the possibility of university, least of all Viktor. Besides, he’s already a star by then, Russia’s treasure. There wouldn’t be any need for him to go to university even if he could.
And Viktor’s fine with that; he has his strengths and his brains aren’t part of that, he knows. He was put on this earth to skate like a dream; he never needed to be smart. It’s not like he’ll ever need to get another job. It’s not like being smart matters in what he does. He doesn’t even need to be able to add up his SP and FS scores; someone else will do it for him.
He knows he’s kinda dumb. He has all the Cs and Ds on his report cards to prove it.
Fast forward a few years, then imagine a Viktor Nikiforov who’s so fucking proud of his Yuuri, his Yuuri who has a university degree, did you hear, his Yuuri who is so smart, he went to university in another country and got his degree in a whole different language, and he maintained a competitive figure skating career while doing it! He hangs Yuuri’s diploma on their living room wall where everyone can see it and tells everyone who’ll listen, Yuuri is brilliant and amazing and he has a university degree, and he tells Yurio that he should go to university too, you’re so smart you’ll definitely do really well! Having a degree is important! You should be like Yuuri, he says, don’t be like me, everyone knows I’m just an airhead! He half-bullies Yurio into studying for entrance exams and half-forces him into applying for university and when he gets in no one is more thrilled than Viktor. He’s so proud of Yurio too! Viktor knew Yurio could do it! Viktor knows Yurio will do super well in university; he can do anything he wants he’s so smart!
Imagine VIktor when he finally retires and takes up choreographing/coaching full time, but that doesn’t keep him as occupied as practicing as a competitive skater himself, so one day he starts rooting through the textbooks Yurio brings to the rink to study when he’s taking a break as his skaters practice. He keeps doing it, and Yuuri catches him looking over a physics textbook and overhears him talking to Yurio about his classes. What are your professors like, Yura? he hears Viktor ask every other day. What are you learning now?
Viktor, Yuuri says one night. Now that you have some time, do you think you’d like to go to college?
Viktor laughs it off, not even considering it, because of course he’s not smart enough for university, he can’t even do basic math.
Don’t be silly, Yuuri, he says. I’m not smart like you.
Imagine a Yuuri Katsuki who knows better than that.
He’s seen Viktor practice and he’s seen Viktor choreograph, intuitively knowing exactly what moves will work and what won’t without even knowing why. He sees Viktor’s tweets to his fans, encouraging them to study and learn, listens to him advise young skaters to also focus on their schoolwork, watches him be more excited than anyone else when Mila graduates university. He knows Viktor needs to pull up the calculator on his phone to figure out a 20% tip and needs to count off his fingers to solve 13 minus 8 but he’s also seen him look over Yurio’s shoulder while he’s doing homework, learning from Yurio as he works. Viktor might not be able to point to Thailand on a map or know the dates of WWII but he watches documentaries for fun and listens with rapt attention when Yurio talks about his classes and the thing is, after many many months of being annoyed and frustrated with Viktor’s inability to remember promises and his distraction during practice, Yuuri has learned that he doesn’t do it on purpose, that Viktor genuinely can’t help it, the same way Yuuri genuinely can’t help his anxiety.
Yuuri knows that Viktor is beautiful. Yuuri knows that Viktor is also intelligent, even if Viktor doesn’t believe that at all.
It takes some fighting, a lot of long nights on the internet, and even more wheedling and coaxing, but eventually Viktor lets Yuuri sign him up for online classes, and then he lets Yuuri make an appointment for Viktor to talk to someone.
Turns out that ADHD and ADD are conditions taken a bit more seriously nowadays, and there’s medication for it that Viktor doesn’t have to worry about taking now that he’s no longer a competitive athlete. Turns out discalculia is a mathematics learning disability that means Viktor will probably never be able to stop counting off his fingers for basic mathematics. Turns out neither of those things makes Viktor dumb.
Turns out Viktor can be really, really good at physics if he can use a calculator.
It’s still not easy, and it takes time, because studying doesn’t come to Viktor as easily as skating, and Viktor is still easily distracted and still very forgetful and still doesn’t think he’s smart enough for any of it. Yuuri has to remind him over and over again that it’s okay to take longer than others to do his homework, to finish his readings, to solve those problems, to be bad at testing, and no, he shouldn’t switch to an ‘easier’ subject, he can do this.
It’s not easy, but it helps that Viktor likes learning.
Viktor choreographs for Olympic medalists, and enrolls in a degree program. Viktor coaches Grand Prix winners, and graduates university with a Bachelor of Science in applied physics. Viktor choreographs for and coaches World Champions, and completes his Master’s thesis.
No one is more surprised than Viktor when he successfully defends his PhD dissertation on kinematics of ice skating, and no one is less surprised than Yuuri.
Imagine a Viktor Nikiforov who is more than a pretty face, who is capable of more than just skating, who likes and wants to learn, and all he needed to do so was a few pills, a calculator, and someone who believed in him more than he believed in himself.
This is so perfect! I really like the idea that Viktor has ADHD. It makes a lot of sense. And I’ll never say no to depictions of dyslexia. This story makes me so happy! Thank you for writing it!
A Way Things Should Be,
Chapter Two: The Improper PartyThen the doorbell rings again, in such a way that Bilbo is once again caught between indignation and confusion, because his front path is not as unwelcoming as a pile of used washcloths! And who in the Shire would dare say something like that about him and his late mother?
(Besides his Aunt Camellia.)
(Also, to be fair, besides most of the Baggins family and a good number of the Tooks.)
(Look, Hobbitish isn’t a nice language, Belladonna Took was a menace, and Bilbo himself isn’t exactly the most outgoing and tolerant of individuals. It’s not actually that unexpected or rare, it’s just really rude that the insult would be used as an opening zinger, because now that Bilbo’s parents have both passed away, that’s really more of a half-an-hour-into-tea sort of statement by someone he actually knows.)
blackash26 