I’ve been thinking about this essay for a very long time. There have been little pieces floating around on my hard drive forever.

This is exactly when I have the LEAST time to take on anything else! But I’m finally writing and posting it, because this is something that needed to be written. And this is truly the time to do it.

So this winter is absolutely insane, I have zillions of things HEAPED up on my plate... and I'm still committed to running FIA and doing even more with it. The fic exchange is starting on December 1st. There are two videos up on the new YT channel, and the third is going up in a couple of days as of this writing. And then there’s the FB page, and I'm going to start doing podcasts, and so and on and on… At some point, I have to ask why. I mean, it COULD be because I'm nuts, but--

(looks outside)

(Dang! That windowless van is following me around again. The men in the white coats almost caught me last time, so I might have to make this quick... ;)

Anyway. :) You see, ONE of the things I've committed to do by January is to finish the next version of Sex and the Single Devil. So I MUST be completely crazy to ALSO take on everything connected with FIA, especially the fic exchange!! BUT... I’ve decided to do it. I’m committed to doing it. And I want to explain why.


I think we’re at a point where we all need to evaluate D/G fanfic and the fandom, and decide where we are and where we’re going. If we look back on the past 10 years or so, we can see that this decade was the Original Era of D/G ™. We’re on the point of entering another one, and I think that 2.0 can be even better than the original—but it’s going to be different. And I want to talk about why, and most importantly, how D/G still matters—and why in some ways, it has more to offer us than ever before. Some of the reasons may really surprise you.

First, we’re going to talk about what D/G means/meant both in canon and out. What is it about these two characters that continues to fascinate and challenge us? What makes that relationship an OTP? It was never a canon ship, but there are good reasons why it’s an iconic ship.

There will be new canon, without a doubt. (We already know about the FB scripts, but I think it’s going to be even more that, and there’s evidence to back that argument up. We’ll talk about why, complete with lots of past examples of artists who just could not stay away from the old work, such as Gene Roddenberry, George Lucas, Kevin Smith, and Peter Beagle.) I think there’s no question that it will stir things up again with the general HP fandom, but we can also benefit was thinking about how that opportunity for new canon might relate to D/G? (I do think that it will give us more background about the families to work with, if nothing else,and we’ll talk about that too.)

We’ll discuss exactly why our fandom needs to be revived to some degree—because I do think that D/G needs a kick in the butt-- and how I think it should, can, and WILL be. I can be kind of opinionated, in case ANYONE hasn’t figured that out yet… ;)

Then we’ll talk about a subject very dear to my heart, which is what D/G writing means for our original work, and the mind-blowing implications of this for fanfic writers moving into publishing (yes, that’s us!) Not only that, but we’ll see how important this issue is for D/G readers, not just writers. We’ll talk about why authors should never, ever, E-V-E-R take down their fanfic, and the surprising secret reasons why it’s such a staggeringly bad idea.

And finally, we’re going to have the thrilling story of how Anise ALMOST gave up D/G a year and a half ago… was TOTALLY sure that I’d never write one word of it again…. And then…
THEN…

It’s supposed to be a surprise ending!! I can’t give it away NOW. ;)


Some of these ideas might be really unexpected. Some of them you might like; some of them, not so much. Some might mean that I end up getting hate mail. :P But I hope that all of this will really make you think about the question of what D/G meant to you in the past, what it means to you now, and what it can and will mean in the future. Because the answers may be more important than you realize now.

Oh, and yes, there are reasons WHY this is rated EN. Because there's a fic at the end!! :) Actually, there are two if you count the really really short one at about Chapter 3... that one basically exists as an illustration of why I want the NEXT fic exchange to be on a new Wordpress blog. Because everyone seems to cracking down on smut content of any kind, aka deciding that we all need to be treated like nine-year-olds, both authors and readers-- and that includes LJ. Well, not that I was going to keep our blog on LJ in the long run anyway. But that's another story. Just wait for Chapter 3.


So come with now on this exciting journey! You know what they say… the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. :) (Or the fic of a zillion chapters begins with… um, thinking about that 128 chapter fic I had that never DID get done, let’s move on, shall we? ;)

It all starts in Chapter 2! Yay!

Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially:
Rinney, dgloves70, SomethingsWicked, brittnymalfoy15

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So. This is a very big topic, and it’s challenging to even know where to start. Let’s start with the context of everything I’m about to say regarding D/G, and why I’m putting so much time and energy into saying it.

I decided a year ago that I was totally done with FIA, D/G, anything connected with Harry Potter, etc etc etc, and that I was now going to concentrate completely on writing original fiction.

It wasn’t a good idea. I grew to understand that. And I now think I know at least some of the reasons why. I’ll talk about that much more at the end, but it’s worth saying now that in a way, that’s what this entire essay is about. That’s why I believe that D/G matters, and always will. The reasons are very complex. We need to look at what D/G was, what it should have been, what it can be, and why it can get there.

There’s a lot to this. So where do we start?

HP canon is how we all got interested, so that’s where I think that the beginning has to be. What were Draco and Ginny in canon? Even more importantly, what could and should they have been?

I haven’t thought about all of this in a long time, but I think that if I’m really going to do all of this work on behalf of D/G, if you’re going to participate, and if we’re going to make this community what it can be… it needs to happen. Actually going over canon again; what a concept! But a very necessary one ;)

Looking at this now, after a stretch of several years, I think we can do something that wasn’t so easy before-- to analyze the books as literature, not only the stuff of which fandoms are made. Draco, Ginny, and their relationship are vital in terms of the structure of these books. And I think that now we can see exactly why, understanding this issue step by step. We’ll end up with answers that are surprising—and important for the future of the fandom community, too.


Okay, so here comes the FIRST thing that may get me some hate mail (maybe not the last, though.) I think that readers will probably react strongly one way or the other to this next idea. But I also think this is something that has to be said, and MUST be said in order for us to move forward as a fandom in the best ways that we could.

JKR is a great writer; her accomplishment with HP was unprecedented in the history of publishing. People responded to her work, and still do. There is something about this series that spoke to so many of us. It strikes a very profound chord in readers for some real reasons. She is one of the great storytellers of our time, without a doubt.

And now I’m going to say THIS…

(laces up New Balance shoes to run if necessary)

There are some aspects of the way the series was wrapped up that are just bullshit. And almost all of these revolve around Draco, Ginny, or both. No other characters were shafted as thoroughly as Draco and Ginny were by the conclusion of the books. No other characters saw so much potential cut short. They certainly weren’t the only ones in that situation, but what made Draco and Ginny different is that they were tied up with plot developments that were cut off so completely—and we do have canon evidence that plans for these developments must have originally existed; there’s too much that doesn’t make sense otherwise, including statements that JKR made in interviews.

I think that because some time has elapsed since the end of DH, now that the movie canon is even complete, we can finally really analyze these questions. It takes some time and distance to be able to do that. And if we don’t do it, I think that we’ll only be causing problems for ourselves in taking D/G fics and art to the next level—which is where all of the creative work has to go.

So let’s look at these questions.

In canon, I really think that Draco and Ginny were the two most fascinating characters with the most potential. But a lot has already been written by many different authors about the reasons why this is the case, so I won’t go over all of it in detail again here. The important point is how their characters relate to the plot arc in the entire series, and this is where a lot of new things begin to crop up.

These are the only two characters among the students who are not what they seem to be, who have much more complexity than they seem to have when first introduced. This isn’t true of Hermione and Ron. They never really change, and neither do any of the other younger characters. In fact, neither does Harry. They’re all just as they appear from beginning to end. Draco and Ginny are different. In the first book, we’re led to believe that Draco is nothing more than the rich, privileged bully, that Ginny is the stupid little girl who has a crush on Harry. But that is not what we learn that they are.

Where do we start to learn these things? Where are the plot points related to D/G really set up? Remember that JKR quote about how the CoS narrative held all the keys to what happens at the end of the series? Well, if that’s what JKR herself thought, I think we should take it seriously. So let’s examine CoS from that point of view.

We see complexity in both of them after they’ve first been introduced, and it’s in this book. This is where also see that they are the only two characters who seem to have supportive families, but actually may not. Draco’s family is not what it seems to be. The scene in Borgin and Burkes where we see the father/son dynamic is one of those which becomes more significant when we analyze it in terms of the entire Draco/Lucius character and plot arcs. If we actually picture this scene as an event one of us might have experienced, it’s clear that there’s something very wrong going on at home with the Malfoys. To be told by your father in front of a shopkeeper the family has known for years that you’ll never amount to more than a common thief is as telling as it gets.

Looking at the Weasleys, Ginny’s family didn’t figure out for an ENTIRE YEAR that she was possessed by the spirit of Tom Riddle. What kind of parenting is this? All we see is some pretty cold criticism after the fact (Arthur Weasley telling her not to trust anything if she couldn’t see where it kept its brain.) She had suffered severe trauma. She needed care, concern and therapy, and she certainly didn’t get any of it.

So Draco and Ginny are alone in a way that nobody else in the younger group is—except for Harry. (And, of course, HE was the golden boy, his way smoothed all the time and by every means possible. Everything always ended well for him, even when maybe it shouldn’t have. He never had to fight on his own, without help, without backup, without support—never. But that’s another argument. So we’ll stop here. ;)

The next thing that is so interesting in that in a way, Draco and Ginny essentially have the same relationship with Harry. They’re both on the outside trying to get in. In the first book, this desired relationship was set up. Draco wanted to be Harry’s friend (the handshake in the first book that Harry refused, remember?), and Ginny wanted to be Harry’s romantic interest (chasing after him at the train station. Can we step into fiction and smack Harry here??)

But it’s in CoS that we see how both Draco and Ginny behaved in terms of the relationship they want from Harry but aren’t getting. They did deal with this failure very differently. Draco decided that he’d take what he could get; if he couldn’t be Harry’s friend, then he’d be his enemy. Ginny tried harder for a positive relationship—and she tried very hard. When Draco said “you’ve got yourself a girlfriend”, he was right. Except that Harry wasn’t responding to her or to Draco in the ways that they wanted. And he was dismissive, uninterested, rejecting both of them casually.

We can honestly say that Harry has to bear some responsibility for the darker path that Ginny took with the diary. It’s hard to believe that she ever would have gotten so involved with that kind of dark magic if Harry hadn’t ignored her so carelessly. That was where and when Draco picked up so quickly on the dynamic between Ginny and Harry. He showed that he knew and understood what was going on, and that he felt jealousy as a result. And it’s significant, I think, that he made this clear to Ginny but not to Harry. He reacted to Ginny in this sense, not to Harry. Certainly, he knew that she spent that year chasing Harry, he commented on it more than once, and I think he saw that Harry would eventually respond to her. Hermione may have annoyed him, and she was actually closer to Harry, but he didn’t react to Hermione in this way. (Sorry, D/Hr fans… and we’ll get into the pairing aspect much more in the next chapter.) And it was because Draco saw that Hermione was Harry’s friend, but that Ginny would one day be much more.

When Draco almost got hold of the diary, he almost had something of Ginny. This was where he almost had the chance to do what Harry ended up doing. If he’d kept her diary, he would have been the one who made that choice to rescue her from the chamber. Even the exact wording of what he says in this pivotal scene is significant (he refuses to let go of the diary, saying “not until I’ve had a look.”) In CoS, Draco is always the one who looks, the only one who sees clearly. If he’d seen Ginny’s diary, he would instantly have known what was really happening.

So JKR was right. The keys really were in CoS. The clues for how this three-way interaction was intended to go were all in CoS. The Draco/Ginny/Harry triangle was set up there. And the only way the interactions make any sense is as a triangle. Look at it this way. Draco was always jealous of everything that Harry had—his Quidditch mastery, his easy friendships, his fame, his prominence; in fact, the first really negative interaction they ever have is when Draco is jealous of Harry’s dragon in Book 1. (And as we all saw, even that plot point was followed up on when Harry was able to ride the dragon in Book 7.) It was clearly logical that he’d be jealous of Harry’s girlfriend, that in some way, at some point, he would try to get what Harry had in Ginny. In fact, it’s the only development that could have been logical. This isn’t rocket science, y’all. The lack of this plot development made no sense whatsoever.

So CoS is the foundation for the argument I’m about to make. D/G made sense in canon, not as a romantic ship, necessarily, but as important interaction that did not end up happening. And this interaction was the only element that could have caused a number of other things to make sense, to fill in significant gaps that are more obvious now that we look back on canon rather than writing in the middle of it.

Here’s how it should have gone, and how I truly believe that the plot did go to some extent at one time, before JKR decided to abruptly pull back the narrative from the darker, more adult, more complex themes. If the narrative had been allowed to breathe, if JKR hadn't suddenly felt the need to start squashing it into something that would “fit the epilogue”, then this is the D/G that we would have seen. (Does this remind anyone else of those “How The Phantom Menace Could Have Been Good” videos? ;)

So let’s examine the facts, and see how they add up to what could and should have happened here.

Draco felt jealousy of Harry over Ginny, and as we can see, it was set up as far back as CoS. Maybe this was romantic, maybe it wasn’t, but it was significant. These feelings didn’t vanish. He certainly noticed Ginny as she matured (remember the train scene in HBP?) The triangle set up in CoS was still there in HBP, so it wouldn’t have disappeared by DH. So what happened as a result?

I think the clue lies in the question of exactly where Draco even was during seventh year. Was he at Hogwarts, or was he at home? Overall, I’d say that he couldn’t have been at Hogwarts. If he were at school, we should have seen some kind of interaction between him and other students. He certainly would have interacted with teachers, and especially with Snape. Even Harry wasn’t dense enough to not pick up on any news about that, and he certainly heard a lot about what other students were doing. Also, we’re shown that Draco is at home more often than I think could have been covered by school vacations.

So essentially, Snape brought him back to Malfoy Manor, and that’s where he stayed. The question is why. Why didn’t Draco go back to school? Education was very important in his family. (Remember Lucius harassing him about grades?) It wasn’t a question of being “caught” if he returned. There wasn’t anyone there who would have any interest in catching him. Everyone knew that Snape was the one who had killed Dumbledore, and yet there he was, the new headmaster. Of course Draco could have gotten away with his part in what had happened.

So Draco could and should have gone back to school… unless there was a very good reason why he didn’t. Otherwise, all that Draco really does that year is hang around the Manor with Voldy and the Death Eaters. Voldy uses him to torture his prisoners (gives traumatized!Draco a big hug and sends him to therapy), but anyone could have done that. So why is he kept at Malfoy Manor?

Let’s consider what the Death Eaters and Voldy wanted almost more than anything else that year—to get ahold of Harry. Everyone was chasing him; nobody knew where he really was. Getting him to Malfoy Manor would have been their first priority; a lot time and energy and thought would have been expended on it.

So what could have possibly made Harry walk into the last place on earth where he wanted to go? What kind of leverage could have been used to get him there?

The most obvious answer in the world is that they would have kidnapped someone who Harry cared about and used him/her as a hostage. But who would it have been in Harry’s case? He didn’t have parents. He didn’t have siblings. His two best friends were already with him.


There’s only one logical answer, and if possible, it’s more obvious than the last one. Ginny was the only person could be used to lure Harry. And everyone knew this. Harry even knew it. Otherwise, what on earth was the point of the scene at the end of Book 6 where Harry broke up with her for “noble reasons”? But Harry didn’t tell anyone. The relationship had been public, but the breakup was a secret. We are being set up to know that everyone, whether friend or enemy, was going to think that Harry and Ginny were still together.


Ginny would have been kidnapped by Lucius Malfoy; this was set up by his putting the diary in her cauldron during her second year. (Otherwise, it just doesn’t make sense that this was the only interaction he ever had with her.) And the purpose would be to get Harry to go to Malfoy Manor in order to try to rescue her.


Think about it. The Death Eaters certainly kidnapped other people. That’s why the dungeon was full, and this is just what happened to Luna so that they would have influence over her father. Are we supposed to believe that none of them would have thought of kidnapping Ginny in order to do the same thing to Harry? Really? And Ginny was at Hogwarts, which everyone knew. Snatching her would have easy. And it would have been the one and only way to get Harry to Malfoy Manor, where Voldy and the Death Eaters so desperately WANTED him to be.


Wouldn’t a third grader be able to figure all of this out? Are we seriously supposed to believe that none of it crossed JKR’s mind?


(Hint: The answers are YES and NO.)


So now we see how these plot points could have happened, and why, But it’s only the setup to everything that this would have meant for D/G… that’s in the next chapter. :)

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A/N: The third D/G video is now UP on our YT channel! We won’t talk about how much time I put into this. It was kind of nuts. But it was quite the learning experience. ;) Anyway, click on the Videos tab.


Secrets of the Internet, D/G Style

Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: brittnymalfoy15, idreamofdraco, SomethingsWicked, and pitzi.

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Welcome back, D/G essay readers! :) Thanks for coming. Please take a seat, and don’t forget to pick up your free chocolate caramel popcorn and an eggnog latte on the way in. Now let’s start at the point where we left off at the end of Chapter Two.

When last we saw Ginny, Voldy and the Death Eaters had kidnapped her because she was the only way to lure Harry into their trap. She’s now in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor. It’s impossible to know at exactly what point she was originally planned to arrive, but I would say that it was roughly when the Harry/Hermione/Ron roundup took place. That always seemed very arbitrary to me because I don’t see that it was motivated by any specific event. It just… happened. So that might have been it. Harry does get there, under circumstances kind of similar to the ones that actually happened—except that he went to MM as a deliberate choice. And like everyone else, Draco knows that Harry has to be on his way.


The way that Draco and Ginny would have contributed to the plot so far is one of those things that is obvious only once pointed out—after that, it’s impossible to ignore. The ways that it would have happened are so significant, so specific, that I think we can safely say the argument supporting the details of the theory is a very strong one. But now we’re going to go a little further into the realm of speculation than we’ve been doing so far, and it’s because the exact possibilities do branch off from here. I do think, though, that given the early arguments, this is the most logical path for the plot to have taken.


Let’s say that Draco was the first one to figure out that Harry was at the manor , and that nobody else had managed that yet. (If they had known, Harry would certainly have been nabbed right away; they set the trap for him in the first place, remember?) Harry pleads with Draco to let Ginny out, reminding him of what he witnessed at the time of Dumbledore’s death. Who knows… maybe he would use a “I know that you’re really capable of doing the right thing, Malfoy, so do it now” argument.


We can guess that Draco has a lot of freedom as far as being allowed to roam through the house, meaning that he could go down to the dungeons. There’s no reason why Draco can’t do what Harry asks, and Harry knows this.


So Draco has a choice. He can keep Ginny there, or he can let her go. He has every reason to choose the first option. Voldy and the DE’s have to be suspicious of his motivations, because they already know that he couldn’t kill Dumbledore. In fact, that could easily be the major reason why he wasn’t allowed to go back to school—it would be too easy for him to run away and escape from it all. By keeping Ginny and revealing Harry’s presence, he would please everyone; as Lucius says in film!DH, everything could go back to the way it used to be.


He would also FINALLY win out over Harry, which otherwise will never happen because his former nemesis has moved beyond his grasp. The most common motivation that we’ve seen for Draco’s actions throughout the entire series is doing simply that, winning where Harry loses. And Draco has never succeeded yet. We never really even see him making another attempt after OotP-- the incident at the very start of HBP isn’t part of a rivalry with Harry; it’s about lashing out at him because of what happened to Lucius Malfoy. But Draco has spent the entire HP series trying to beat Harry at something, and without the Ginny plotline in DH, that desire has no resolution. And we’ve had many clues in the text that he has a special jealousy over Ginny. Keeping her and turning Harry in would represent the greatest victory of all; this dual success could make up for every one of his failures.


Every motivation is there for Draco to keep Ginny instead of letting her go—jealousy, envy, desire, fear, the yearning to please his parents, and the seductive pull of power.


And against all of this, there’s only the fact that he hates Voldemort and the Death Eaters after understanding much more of what they really are. He’s sickened by what he sees and what he’s forced to participate in. He grasps the evil side of the darkness that once seemed so appealing to him.


This is Draco’s true defining choice. He could keep Ginny at the Manor, and he has every reason to do it. But he doesn’t. He lets her escape. Whatever his feelings about her (and I highly doubt that they would have been spelled out), he allows her to leave, even knowing that she goes straight to Harry. It is his moment of moral triumph, perhaps even more so than not killing Dumbledore.


Again, we can’t be sure that this scenario is exactly the way it went down. But it’s hard to even know where to begin with listing the fatal problems and weird loose ends that are solved and tied up by this one solution.


Pretty much everything set up in CoS is meaningless without it. The much-touted idea that all of the clues for the ending are there makes no sense otherwise. (Harry and Co. having to fight the basilisk again doesn’t begin to count as “holding all the keys”, if you ask me.) Every interaction that has been set up between Draco and Ginny is fulfilled; otherwise, they’re left hanging. The Lucius connection is completed; the fact that he never has anything to do with Ginny again after CoS is otherwise inexplicable.

There are so many aspects of Draco and Ginny’s characters in DH, in particular, that just do not make sense without this plot development. Draco finally had some depth of character and genuine importance in HBP, and then… that was it? Really? He had been presented as aware of Ginny’s interest in Harry since the first moment he ever saw them together. It’s not that this jealousy was necessarily romantic when they were eleven and twelve years old, but when he saw that 16-year-old Harry and 15-year-old Ginny were finally together, isn’t it the most logical thing in the world that Draco would make that leap? The D/G interactions in HBP would finally have meaning—his marked notice of her on the train, her antagonism towards him after the Sectumsempra incident, neither of which ever had any resolution because of their lack of any interaction in DH.

And a lot of JKR’s statements about Ginny’s character in general would finally make sense. Otherwise, they just don’t. She is the only case of an HP character where we’re never shown what she can do; instead, we are told. (If you’ve ever been in a writing group, you have heard the 101-level “show don’t tell” advice until you’re ready to strangle the next person who says it. Are we really supposed to believe that JKR doesn’t know this, especially when it is demonstrated with literally every other character?)

Ginny was set up to have powerful magic. Her latent power in the CoS, JKR’s statement that we were going to see “impressive magic” from Ginny after “hints” at what she could do, her status as the seventh child of a seventh son… nothing, nothing could have made less sense than setting up all of these expectations and then never fulfilling even one of them. And that’s what happened. But if we had seen Ginny use magic to get out of the dungeons at Malfoy Manor, we would have seen what was repeatedly and specifically promised.

For all of the interview quotes about how forceful and tough Ginny is, we almost never witness her making a real decision or taking action. And I think it’s significant that the only place we really see this is in OotP, the book where character development started to get away from JKR, the one that would have set the series on a much more complex and interesting path. Afterwards, that’s it. We’re only TOLD about how she kept up the DA and defied Snape and the Carrows in DH. It’s as if she desperately tried to escape and develop character on her own, and then she was ruthlessly squashed… (hugs feisty!Ginny.) By deciding to get out of the dungeons, asking Draco to let her go, and escaping, Ginny would actually show that resourcefulness and courage.

Another important point—and it’s really sad one-- is that H/G actually has some meaning in this context. Whether or not it would have been spelled out—and my guess is not—the fact would be that Ginny could have chosen Draco, and she didn’t. She supposedly cared about Harry. By showing her choosing Harry when she could have done differently, we would have seen proof.

Harry would know this, and would be aware that she chose him when he wasn’t her only option. It would have shifted the dynamic in their relationship to something that felt real. It would have been a moment of strength for Ginny—in the wrong direction, I think, considering how Harry had treated her for six and a half books by then. But it would have been a choice it was possible to at least understand and respect.

If all of this is true, and if the Draco/Ginny/Harry triangle was part of the original plot arc, it’s not that we would have necessarily liked its ending. The way we’d probably want it to play out is that Draco makes the choice to free Ginny and she chooses to stay with him, realizing that Harry is a loser who’s STILL treated her like crap. I doubt this is what JKR had in mind. ;) But we would end the narrative and the D/G connection knowing that a deeper relationship between the two of them was indeed a possibility, just not the road that was taken. And again, H/G would have actually made some sense as a canon ending in this case.


Even the epilogue would also be less obnoxious in this context because we’d know that Harry and Ginny did not end up together arbitrarily. It wouldn’t feel so empty, so tired, so full of clichés, so much like a sixth-graders’ first attempt at bad fanfic. Instead, while we might not agree with it, the epilogue would… well, at least not make you want to throw the book across the room after reading it. We’ll analyze exactly why the existing epilogue was such a fail when we delve more deeply into pairings, but that’s enough for now!

We really could go on and on here, but it boils down to one thing.

Chekhov famously once said that if the playwright puts a gun on the table at the beginning of Act 1, then she’s got to pick it up and shoot by the end of Act 3. Well, what JKR did was like going into a room filled by a number of tables, all with different labels on them. “Plot,” “Theme,” “Action,” “Characters: Snape, Dumbledore, Ron, Hermione”, and so on and on. She then laid down gun after gun after gun on each table, all the way from BB guns to Winchesters to Glocks to Uzis, plus a nuclear bomb or two. Then she went from table to table to table and fired every weapon on them.

That’s the real key—not just that the D/G plotlines weren’t followed up on, but that all the others were. We know that JKR DOES know better than this, because there were so many clues laid early in the series that WERE fulfilled by the end—the cloak, the scar, the prophecy, neither can survive while the other lives, the roles of characters like Snape and Dumbledore and Umbridge, ad nauseum.

To return to the metaphor, maybe we liked the way those weapons on those other tables were used; maybe we didn’t, but either way, Chekhov’s advice was followed and every other gun in the room was fired. But not one shot from one gun on the Draco-and-Ginny table ever went off. JKR laid them down, and then she never touched them again. She just looked at that table, turned away, and slammed the door shut.

A fifth-grader in a Remedial Creative Composition class would know better than to write a story in that way. Are we really supposed to believe that JKR didn’t understand how little sense it made?

I honestly believe that the potential D/G material was thrown out, and that the narrative suffered because of it. I think that if JKR had chosen differently, yes, we would have had some of the D/G interaction that WE would have liked to see so much. But it’s more than that. Everyone would also have a narrative that was better, richer, more satisfying, and more lasting.

So we now see D/G was what canon needed; in fact, it’s the only development of the narrative that would have made any sense at all at many key points. Draco and Ginny should have played a vital role in the plotline, and their relationship should have been key. I’d also argue that their story would have formed an emotional core that was missing in the end. In the next chapter, we’ll see how this translates to D/G as a pairing. In fact, we’ll understand why they’re the only pairing in canon that has the true potential to last in fiction-- and what that means for the future of the fandom. We’ll move past what we should have had in canon, and into what we can have now.

(See? This really is headed in a logical direction.;)


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Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: brittnymalfoy15, Marinka, SomethingsWicked (who is quoted in this chapter!), and purrbecomesthenight.


Before we start THIS chapter...

Another piece of evidence for the D/G plot thread occurred to me after posting Chapter 3, and here's how it goes...


We certainly know that Draco was Snape's favorite student at Hogwarts. Later, we saw that he was willing to do anything rather than let Draco die or fall into darkness, including killing Dumbledore. Snape and Draco were parallel characters in some ways, although this was never explored to the degree that it should have been.The past Snape/Lily relationship was crucial to the plot of DH (and was actually the part that worked best, I would argue.) So let's say that Snape represents Draco, James Potter-Harry, and Ginny-Lily. (Yes, I know, the idea that Harry married Ginny because she was like his mother is extremely creepy, isn’t it? But there are a lot of parallels between Lily and Ginny.)


Snape/Lily foreshadowed D/G. This isn't to say that they would have been exactly the same type of couple, or that their paths would have been the same. But we saw in CoS and from several clues later on that Draco had much more interest in Ginny than he ever admitted. I think there are subtle hints that he would have liked to be the kind of friend to her that Snape was to Lily, although it clearly never happened in Draco and Ginny's case.

So I really see the parallel to Snape’s choices in Draco’s lost decision to let Ginny escape from the MM dungeons. Just as Snape never forgot Lily and would always resent James more than ever, Draco would never forget Ginny and would always resent Harry on an even deeper level than before. (An interesting idea for a fic is that Draco also resents Ginny’s kids—I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen that, but it would be realistic.)


Just ONE more link in the chain of evidence...


Okay! On to the next chapter. :)
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In the last couple of chapters, we’ve seen that a major plot thread in HBP and DH was missing, and we’ve looked at what it could and should have been. We can deduce that it was inextricably tied up with Draco, Ginny, and whatever it was that lay between them. (Here’s your Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat and a magnifying glass! Don’t you feel smarter already? ;)

The D/G potential was intrinsic to the plot, which I think has a lot to do with the feeling some of us had that something indefinable didn’t quite work out. I think that many readers sensed this even if they had no interest at all in D/G. (And again, the D/G relationship in the lost plotline would almost certainly not have been overtly romantic. So this really applies to everyone interested in HP for any reason.)


This is the core. We all had to start with this, although I do think that’s only a part of the whole story about the importance of D/G. We see why some kind of D/G interaction/relationship makes so much sense in terms of the plot, but that’s not the end.

So let’s move on to the next logical question. Why does D/G have a lasting power? If it were only because of their importance in the plot of HP itself, that wouldn’t be enough to explain it—or to show why we should continue to care about D/G.

I really think that D/G has an iconic quality that no pairing in HP even comes close to achieving. This has to do with characteristics of the pairing itself as well as what it means to the plot, and also some key qualities that Draco and Ginny have in and of themselves.

D/G may not be the only pairing that we ship, and it certainly might not be the only one that we write—because for a lot of people, fandom interests extend beyond HP. (Have y’all looked at ALL the categories in ffnet lately? There’s Microsoft Paint fanfic!!!) But D/G is why we’re here. This is the pairing that hooked our imagination to begin with. And that’s why it specifically relates to us—as fans, as readers, as writers. So that’s where we’re going in this chapter! :)

And you know what that means… we’re going to go over all the HP pairings! ;) (I can’t believe I’m doing this… talk about back in the day, right?) Of course, pairings are far from the only issue—as SomethingsWicked put it, we feel let down by the end of DH, not only as shippers, but as HP fans in general. But I do think that the comparison-of-pairings exercise is significant related to the important points about what D/G is, could have been, and could become.

So if we look at all the different pairings in HP, we can see that these represent tropes. What exactly is a trope? (looking up the Merriam-Webster dictionary online…)

b : a common or overused theme or device : cliché

Merriam-Webster is pretty snarky about this, but I don’t think that a trope is necessarily a bad thing. There is nothing new under the sun. There are only seven basic plots (or five, or three, or one, depending on who you believe. ;) It’s all in how the cliché is used—but I do think that in and of itself, a trope is not really enough to make a pairing last, which is why D/G is more than a trope.

And one by one, those trope-y pairings are…

D/Hr-- which is about forcibly hooking up the female main character with the bad boy. And I have to say that I always feel like it’s pretty forced. I’ve read some good D/Hr fics, but the premise has always been too unbelievable to me. I’ve never been a strict canon writer, but I think that our transformative fics have to be believable in terms of original canon. Even in a complete crackfic, I just cannot see those two together. If Draco has to be paired up with someone else, most other pairings are more believable than D/Hr. Sorry. I like to write the idea that Draco would have liked to be Hermione’s friend at Hogwarts and mellows enough so that a friendship might even happen, but that’s as far as I think it can be justified. That having been said, the D/Hr community has done a LOT of things in the past couple of years that we can learn from and need to learn from. But we’ll talk more about that in the next couple of chapters.

D/H-- two male antagonists ending up together as a gay couple. It’s an old trope and it can be done really well, but for a variety of reasons, I don’t think it ever really works logically for these two characters. A lot of D/H fics are really great as pieces of writing, though—it’s just that they might as well have nothing to do with HP.

H/Hr—two best friends realizing that their feelings are not platonic. This is much more believable, and some great fics have come out of this one. But by the end of DH, I didn’t want to see Harry inflicted on poor Hermione. :P

R/Hr-- I think it’s actually not that far from H/Hr. It’s based on the inevitability of two people who’ve had both a friendship and latent sexual attraction finally hooking up. It may actually be the most realistic ship, although I think it’s not the easiest thing to make it exciting in fics all by itself. But it’s a good side pairing. I like to hook up Hermione and George, though. :)

Draco/Blaise is ditto with GAY best friends, as is Ginny/Hermione. Those are two that I think would have made sense if I could see Draco as gay or Ginny as a lesbian, which I really can’t. (I usually write that he had one drunken fling with Blaise at Hogwarts, though.)

Harry/Ron is another version of this idea, and quite honestly, this is the most realistic Harry ship by far. Harry never shared so much of himself in the entire narrative with anyone other than Ron, not even Hermione. No other two characters were so close. (Can’t we rewrite the epilogue and pair them up right now? ;)

Ginny/Pansy (an unusual one, but I’ve seen it) is always linked to D/H, and is about two girls realizing their supposed boyfriends are gay and hooking up with each other.

Draco/Pansy-- this actually is a ship that I could have seen if Ginny died a tragic death. Pansy showed that she could be a devoted friend, and she was certainly the only person interested in saving the entire school in DH instead of shielding Harry at everyone else’s expense. Draco and Pansy had similar backgrounds and interests. They could have gotten along fairly well. I don’t really see that Pansy ever would have reached any of the depths in Draco, though, and this would mean that she never could have been to him what Ginny would have been.

Draco/Astoria is about… well, randomly sticking two people together, as far as I could tell. Why didn’t we ever see any mention of Astoria, even when we’ve seen a lot of Daphne? And being only 2 years younger, Astoria certainly would have been at Hogwarts.

And of course, we HAD to come to H/G.

That relationship is the furthest thing possible from the way it was presented-- undying, true love and longstanding devotion rewarded at last. That’s a trope which I think isn’t all that appealing to begin with. It sets up a hierarchy between the two people involved; it’s the kind of relationship where one partner loves and one is loved. There is always an imbalance of power.

But H/G doesn’t even succeed at that. Instead, this is a pairing of an insecure girl fixating on an oblivious boy; she worships him, he basically ignores her except for sexual attraction—and that’s the only real reason they end up together. That’s the key to why I think that the epilogue is so bad, apart from the terrible writing, apart from the annoying idea of doing nothing to wrap up the narrative almost twenty years later except for listing all the pairings. H/G is really disturbing, and we’ll talk more about that a little later.

D/G, more than any other pairing, has many different levels. It works as a Romeo/Juliet type of pairing, which is the most obvious comparison-- achingly passionate, condemned by both of their families, and treading the knife’s edge between true love and tragic ending. Taking an example from history, they could even be Henry VIII/Anne Boleyn-- an obsessive love between a rich, powerful man and a poor but brave and spirited woman that turns dark and destructive in the end.

These are very powerful tropes by themselves, but it’s what could have happened between D and G is what makes them an iconic pairing and not only a trope. And this, too, is taking place on more than one level.


Remember what we saw in the last chapter of this essay. The story of their interaction is the one that would have completed the plotline and emotional core of DH, and so of the entire series. In comparison, all of the other HP pairings are just kind of… there. Even the ones that are canon and not annoying; even the ones that made sense and could have realistically happened—they aren’t central to the plot. But one of the main reasons D/G represents an iconic pairing is because they are central to what the plot should have been.


When you think about the really iconic pairings, they are all inextricably part of the narrative. Without Scarlett/Rhett, there would have been no GWTW. Without Rochester, there’s no Jane Eyre narrative. Without Irene, the entire plotline of A Scandal in Bohemia wouldn’t have existed. Not only was she the driving force of the narrative, but SH’s decision to not go after her at the end is the culmination of the plot itself. (Furthermore, if you look at it in a modern way—BBC, Elementary—Irene is the one who emotionally scarred Sherlock for life.) Without Cathy/Heathcliff, the entire driving force of the narrative is gone from Wuthering Heights.


And of course, without Romeo or Juliet, there’s… well… no Shakespearean drama named Romeo and Juliet. Without Henry/Anne, we don’t get the Reformation, Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, the birth of the middle class in England, the British empire… it changes history a lot.

But there’s one more to think about from the POV of what makes D/G such a special, unique pairing. And that’s the fact that both Draco and Ginny had special qualities as individuals, wounds that they could have healed by sharing, broken places that could have fit into each other. Where Harry failed Ginny in a pretty spectacular way, Draco—and only Draco—could have come through for her.

That’s all in the next chapter!


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Remember—the Fic Exchange is starting on December 1st!! Head on over to the LJ page and check it out. The link is here: The LJ Exchange Page

12/21, ETA:

So here's the thing: the rest of this essay was on the Long-Lost Drive of Doom. As of today, the computer expert can't salvage the files. :( It's been sent to a mysterious "lab" somewhere in CA. Who knows, maybe it's the eastern deserts, close to Roswell, and aliens might be involved...

But anyway. I WILL NOT GIVE UP HOPE. AND... whether the original is ever retrieved or not, I WILL keep writing this thing. There are older notes, and chapters can be reconstructed. This essay will be finished. OH YES, IT WILL.

A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: LifeofDracoandGinny, Grizel, eaudetoilettex, SomethingsWicked, and pitzi.
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Hey, all! Fans, casual readers, and people who stumbled across this thing when you were really trying to find the recipe for that three-ingredient Japanese cake… whoever you are, I’ll bet you never thought you’d see another chapter of this! Not that this concern is really misplaced, because I didn’t know if you would, either. O.o. First of all, the Hello Kitty-shaped drive that had this essay got mysteriously corrupted about a year ago. Nobody was ever able to find out what happened. No expert could make sense of it. Some of the files were just permanently… gone. OF COURSE, they were the most important ones (isn’t that what always happens, though??) Few events are more discouraging than losing the exact files you worked the hardest on. So that was a major setback.

But I think that an even bigger problem was the contents of the next chapter I’d been trying to write. It was a continued analysis of Ginny’s character and her part in the narrative, especially how Ginny should have been central to that narrative (and obviously wasn’t. :P) We had an entire book about Ginny (CoS), and then her character was diminished, squashed, and basically dropped by the end of the series. Aside from whether it was good or bad in terms of the overall story (hint: it was BAD), it was a very strange decision. I can’t remember ever seeing another one like it in a multibook series. When a character is given that much importance near the beginning, they don’t normally fade and disappear by the end. It just doesn’t make sense. But that’s what happened to Ginny. I think there are very specific reasons, and that they’re really the same reasons why the resolution of the book felt so unsatisfying in terms of both plot and pairings. And yes, that’s also why I was almost more unsatisfied with what had happened to Harry’s character than either Draco or Ginny’s.

So this is basically what’s coming up a couple of chapters from now.

HOWEVER… the writing in general kind of got stuck, and I was never really able to get back to it in any way that resulted in an actual next chapter of the essay. There are some other reasons why this happened, I think, and they’re related to my original writing. I won’t go into any of it right now, but the point is that I was stuck. Stuckness is not a fun place to be, let’s just say. Several different things have started to work together to change that. Many of them, again, are related to the original writing I’m working on right now… but not all of them.

There’s a metastory to why we write D/G (or really, why anyone writes in any fandom.) I think that for now, it’s more important to talk about why D/G became such a huge part of my writing in the first place. And I also want to know what other people think about this in terms of their own writing. I think that’s important before going on with the essay itself. Because the point is why the essay is worth writing in the first place, why we’re all here, what it is that still attracts us to D/G, to Draco, Ginny, the sum of their parts, and I would argue more than that sum. There’s not much point in making the points in the essay before analyzing why the essay is even being written in the first place!

So here it is, the Official Story of Anise’s Quest Through D/G (tm.)

Come with now on a flashback to the summer of 2002. I’d just been on an endless, quixotic quest to place four books (count em, four) with agents. These books will never see the light of day (if we’re all lucky. :P One was a kids’ book, The Summer Anise B. Leinen Drove Me Nuts. One was a YA book about teenaged sisters living through a difficult summer, The Secret Life of Girls. I think that was the only one that really had a narrative worth salvaging. But I would say now that when I wrote TSLoG, I simply didn’t have enough distance from the events which inspired it. I hadn’t moved far enough from being a teenager to really write convincingly about teenagers. Maybe it would be worth going back to rework someday, or… eh.

The third book was a bad historical romance set in 16th century England, Seize the Shining Day. Although I still think the historical work in that one was good; the story itself was the problem. And one… (hides face) really, really bad erotic fic, Lady of the Manor. Oh, it was bad. Just trust me on that.

Anyway, these books were all rejected by many fine agents and publishers. Ebooks were certainly around in 2002, but the era of Kindle self-publishing was still a few years in the future. There seemed to be no options. I sank into misery and decided that I was never ever going to write fiction again. But THEN…

It all began when my boyfriend at the time handed me a book.

Kevin: You should read this.

Me: (scoffingly) Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone…Isn’t that a children’s book?

Kevin: You should read it.

Me: (scornfully) It’s too popular to be good.

Kevin: (smiling, still holding out the book)

Me: (snippily) Oh, okay. (taking book.)

And that’s where it all started. O.o.

I was hooked, which is probably what happened to pretty much everyone else reading this. I wasn’t even completely sure why, and in a way, I’m still not, but there’s no doubt about the fact that it happened. I finished GoF and then had the sinking realization that there were only four books.

If the next event hadn’t happened, who knows if there ever would have been a single Anisefic, but… it did. A friend sent me a link to a horrible LoTR fanfic and said, in essence, “You have to read this. It’s the worst thing ever written.” This statement wouldn’t have led everyone to go to FFN and read the fic, but I have great appreciation for truly, truly bad writing that doesn’t realize how bad it actually is. (I’m a longtime MSTie, which kind of says it all.;)

My friend hadn’t exaggerated. I could scrub my brain with bleach twenty four hours a day and still never really get that fic out of my head. (I’m sure it’s still there, somewhere in the depths of the dregs of FFN. An authorial self-insertion, Legolas on a white horse scooping her up in the woods, enough SPAG errors to make the English language whimper, lie down, and die… you get the idea, right?)

But…. I was fascinated by the entire concept of One Big Fanfic Archive. (Kind of like John Reed and the Industrial Workers of the World…) You see, fanfic has an incredibly long pedigree. I actually have a classic mimeographed copy of LotR fic from 1974 that once belonged to my mother. The earliest modern fandom (Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes) has been going on so long that the earliest fanfic is itself out of copyright. Fanfic far predates the net, PC’s, computers themselves, movable type, and, in fact, the dawn of written language. There’s an ENTIRE chapter based on this concept coming up later in the essay, but the point here is that there’s never before been a way to collect all fanfics and fandoms together in one place in a way that is accessible to a good chunk of the planet. I have a lot of issues with FFN, believe me, but as a creative concept, it’s incredibly exciting.

And a thought dawned...

If there’s LotR fanfic, then there has to also be fanfic for these Harry Potter books.

Hmm. What if I looked for it…

(types)

YAY! It exists! Um, more than exists. It’s EVERYWHERE. Look how much of it there is!

And… it kind of all went from there.

This was basically a time when the earliest HP fandom era was ending and the intermediate one was still to come. FFN existed; so did Fictionalley, and I’m sure there were other sites, but those were the only two I knew of. The first wave of big-name fans were at or even slightly past their original peak; you could still read about the Big Three fanfic writers (I can’t remember who they were anymore, though.) It was before the entire Cassandra Claire plagiarism mess, before the weird situation where Msscribe impersonated a Christian model who was supposedly harassing her, and even before the very first fandom conference. (That happened in summer 2003, and we’ll be getting to it eventually.)

At first, I was only looking for HP fics in general, kind of reading what I found or what was recommended to me and getting to know more about the fandom. I figured out pretty quickly that the writing tended to be centered around relationships, and little by little, I felt that some pairings made for better writing than others. There was a lot of great slash writing out there (still is,) but the main pairing was Draco/Harry, of course, and I never felt that it was a believable relationship. This meant that the plots, character development, and situations stemming from this pairing never felt to me like they really worked as well as they could have.

If the writing centers around a pairing and that pairing itself isn’t really believable in terms of the characters, then there’s going to be a hollow feeling at the center, which is something I still very much believe. Even the best D/H fics tended to have this flaw. I did actually read several H/G and D/Hr fics in this Early Fanfic Era, and that’s why I was never able to get too excited about any of them. But then the search started narrowing to a particular pairing—which was D/G, as you might have already guessed, dear reader. ;) From then on, I was pretty much hooked.

The first D/G fic I remember was All You Need Is Love, which I think was a collaboration between two authors. I actually printed it out to read, but it was thrown out during a move, and I never found it again. After all that time, no guarantees are made as to the accuracy of this re-creation, but… I think the plot involved Draco and Ginny being kidnapped by Voldemort and sent back in time. (??) I definitely remember that the last chapter involved Ginny splashing around in a pool, and implied D/G action that was about to take place right after the end. After that, I definitely remember Bride of Slytherin and Beauty on the Fire. Rising From Ashes was another early D/G fic, although as we know, the promised sequel never materialized. :P

And suddenly… without warning… my writing came back.

There is no way to describe what it meant. A new me emerged, a me that had been submerged for a long time, one that was creative, strong, and happy. I carried notebooks and wrote constantly; there was more than one night when I wrote almost until the sun came up. I reconnected with an important self, and all because of D/G. That’s why I owe so much to this fandom.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the first long fic I worked on was any good. It wasn’t… believe me, it wasn’t. That’s why it has never seen the light of day. :P I think I included half of one chapter in Snips and Snails and Draco Tales, and that’s all that anybody should probably ever read from that fic. Although I will say this… Ginny secretly gave Harry a love potion as a huge plot point, which is why I’m still convinced that I’m psychic. HBP was still a couple of years in the future. However, Dumbledore then sent Draco and Ginny to the Mall of America, and... that’s all you need to know. (Why? Um, it seemed to make sense at the time…) Suffice it to say, there were some issues.

But what mattered much more than anything else as that this fic was a way to start writing again, when I’d really started to think that I never would. I can honestly say that the D/G ship brought the Writing Me back to life.

In the next chapter… Jewel of the Harem, the story of the first HP conference in Orlando, the founding of FIA, and so much more! Also, a grad student from India is writing about the D/G fandom for a media studies project, and you… yes, YOU… can help and contribute. I'll tell you exactly how and why. :) More tomorrow!

So, *basically* this is kind of a reply to Amber's post in reply to idreamofdraco's post on the FIA facebook page. (so go and read it first.) The thread is here. It started as a LONG reply, and at some point, I realized that it really needed to be the next chapter of this essay. After this, we'll go back to the chronological story of how I got involved in the fandom in the first place. :)




Amber wondered if we're in an inevitable decline as a fandom, and I'm not going to repeat her exact reasons in my own words, because she put it so well. I've thought about that too. For example, I wasn't sure what to expect from the 2016 ffn exchange fics this time around... I was a little gloomy over the fact that there were only 6 fics too... but when I read them, I was REALLY impressed by the quality. I really hope that everyone seeks these fics out and reads them, because I was a little dubious about the chances of getting such a great batch. We have to keep this fandom alive, if for no other reason. We have to be able to continue to read fics like this! ;)


So could this happen? If so, how and why? Has anyone else done it? That’s what really got me thinking.




Yes, HP canon has been 'closed" since 2007. But what does that actually mean in terms of the fandom? The thing is that there a lot of other examples-- a LOT-- of fandoms that continue long, long after the original canon was closed. Arthur Conan Doyle published the last Sherlock Holmes fic so long ago that not only is IT out of copyright, but the first SH fanfics are, too. But there are still thriving communities of fans writing and reading old school SH fanfics. When I visited my sister in San Rafael last week, she'd just had surgery and we had to spend a lot of time in the hotel room... so we watched the first two seasons of the original Star Trek on Netflix. There were exactly three seasons of that show, it ended in 1969, and people are STILL writing new fanfic about it. (Several new profic are published every year, too.) And William Shatner carved an entire career out of it and now does commercials for Priceline. O.o. And I can never get over the size and strength of the Jane Austin fandom… I have to admit, I’m a much bigger fan of the Brontes, but there it is.

The ultimate example, in a way, is Star Wars—the Ep VII Force Awakens reboot is all about the fan love, which I think is WHY it works. The fact that it reminds us of the original isn’t a negative (IMHO, of course! ;) It’s the natural result of the fact that the original Star Wars was an indelible cultural phenomenon. The way to continue this isn’t to attempt some kind of improved versions of the dreaded prequels of doom (Jar Jar was ‘original’, spending hours on trade negotiations and taxation issues was original, but if anything ever proved that what is original is not always what is good, those examples did.) It’s to return to the roots of what made the first Star Wars great, which were precisely the aspects that were NOT ‘original” (the hero’s journey has been a storytelling trope since Uga the Tribe Shaman told that story around a campfire about 100,000 years ago. Ugh the Caveman probably raised his hand and said, "Uga told story last week." ;) ) George Lucas didn't even seem to know how to imitate his old work; the prequels would probably have been better if he'd at least tried to do that. But JJ Abrams didn't imitate the source material-- he loved it deeply, and EP VII was fanfic in the best possible sense of that word, the product of that love.


Yes, there’s been new “canon’ for all these three fandoms, from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to BBCSherlock to TNG/DS9/Enterprise/the JJ Abrams reboot to… um… the other JJ Abrams reboot. ;) But you could say that the same thing is true of HP—Fantastic Beasts being a good example. And it’s not as if pairings that weren’t canon before suddenly become canon in the new iterations. Star Trek: Into Darkness didn’t contain Kirk/Spock; BBC!Sherlock flirts with the Sherlock/John relationship just as much as all the other canon but doesn’t go any further. The pairings in these fandoms survive because of something essential and intrinsic in each of them. And the same, I think, has to be true of D/G.

And that’s why we need to have more non-traditional D/G, which I think is what really is happening. It’s not that the old tropes and fics based on them aren’t good, but we do need to move beyond them, too. IN some ways, I think, that also means going back to basics. The reason why I was so attracted to D/G in the first place isn’t really about the “romance” as such, but rather that these two characters share things that no others do in HP (especially not Harry and Ginny.) Both Draco and Ginny have hidden darkness, a history of trauma, of being misunderstood by the world they live in, and of needing to make it on their own without the kind of help that Harry constantly had in every book. They’re both survivors.

I didn’t really write D/G for quite a while, and I do know now why that was: I wasn’t facing up to the reasons why the character of Ginny pulled me so much in the first place, and it really affected my other writing, too. Ginny was the first example I have ever seen of her particular type of character in fiction—I’ve NEVER seen another one—and I’ve gone back and forth with understanding this and not really wanting to deal with it.

Well, I’m going back to it now in my nonfiction memoir writing, and the more I do of it, the more I realize that I also have to keep writing about Draco and Ginny. They’re all facets of the same type of writing. If you’re a D/G author, you may or may not write for the same types of reasons I do (actually, for your sake, I hope not)… and you may not read for the same reasons. But there is something about the D/G pairing, about these characters separately, about the way that they’re more than the sum of their parts when they’re together, which means that it has the potential to go on for a very long time. The SH fandom has been a thing since 1887… so WE have a lot more life left in D/G! ;)

Exactly how, though? Which fics might fit this description? How do they work? Well, that’s for future chapters… ;)

ETA: March 2017: More coming soon!