Tea, Sunflower Seeds, and a Book

381newmessages @ 2007-08-17T15:38:00

2007-08-17T23:40:34Z

I was half a bus away from him. He sat at the front, I at the back. I felt like puking. He didn’t even look that much like Him, just certain features, his height. He wore the same sort of tweed stuff that all people that age wear. He had the same kind of walking cane...one of those thick ones made from one piece of wood.
All of that I could have dealt with, could have ignored. I mean, he was so far away, and there were so many people. But then, he raised his hands and rubbed his face. They were his hands. His fingers. The same ones that had been inside of me, searching, scouring, digging for something I hadn’t even known of. I could feel them, these phantoms inside of me, moving, scratching, endlessly hurting.

I thought I was over it. I thought I had forgiven, if not forgotten. I thought that after six fucking years I would be able to face the demon whenever I met Him. And it wasn’t even him.
The bastard on the bus smiled at me. Just a quizzical, half smile, probably because of the nauseated way I was staring at him, unable to wrench my eyes away. He was probably wondering why I had so much loathing in my gaze. Did he not see what he was doing to me?

Did He not see what he would do to me?

I couldn’t help it then. The tears ran down my cheeks, even as I choked on sobs and tried to keep my breakfast down. Never had I had such an instantaneous physical reaction to anything. And I thought I had forgiven. I thought that by talking about it, sharing it, warning people, I had purged myself of this hell.

I can’t stop thinking about it. Even in my dreams I can't escape. Vague images of canes and his paperback books mesh with the mangoes he would get especially for me.

I can't breathe properly...

When will this end? When will I be able to move on?

I am so paranoid. What if my father, my brothers, my best friend, what if any of them have this in them? How do I know that when I get married I won't provide some pedophile with the prime opputurnity by having children with him? How do I know that someone around me won't look at my little kids and see a sexual object?

I have to see Him next year.

What am I going to do? How will I be able to see him at the airport, kiss his wife, stay in the same place as him? Will I be a coward and attempt to act normally, or will I finally be able to gain closure by yelling at the man who loved me so, yet violated me the most?

Everyone knows. I don't know how, but slowly, the knowledge of what He did to me has trickled out. And yet, nothing has happened. Nobody has said anything. There have been no denials because there have been no accusations. Why?

And yet they know. They know what he did, how, when everyone else would be taking naps in the afternoon heat, he would call me to him, and that even the times I would fake sleep he would come get me. Take me out to where no one could see and dig. Shove his fingers in a hole I hadn't even known existed, twist and turn until I cried out in pain. And as soon as he was done, as soon as he had achieved whatever the hell it was that he wanted, He would pull up my pants, pull down my shirt, pat me on my bum and send me on my way. He never acted differently, never showed an ounce of remorse, or glee, or anything. Never did it seem that what was tearing me apart, what he was causing, had any effect on him.

Oh my God, I can't do this. I don't know where to go, what to do to get rid of the memories, of the pain, of the guilt.

My first fic...

2007-08-09T04:13:46Z

Hulloooo y'all,
So today I went over to my neighbours to chat and found her in her raspberrry patch drowning in berries. So, I, of course being the compassionate neighbour that I am, offered to unload her of some of her crop. Result: I have enough berries in my freezer for about half a year *points to icon*, and have been told to go tomorrow to pick more. Anyhoo, this inspired my first ever fic, or maybe its a drabble, which is un-betaed and took me exactly an hour and a half, and for which I could not come up with a better title than...

Title: Raspberries
Rating: G? PG-13?
Ship: Draco/Hermione
Summary: Draco grumbles...

“Stupid…work not even fit for a house-elf…I cannot believe what I do for this woman!” Draco muttered under his breath. In a squeaky voice, he continued, “Oh, it’ll be fun, she says. Oh, you need to experience Muggle culture she says. Chit doesn’t tell me what we’ll be doing! Hard manual labour is what it is…my hands are mosquito bitten, my shoes are caked in mud, and I’ll definitely have to see the Healer for my back now…”

Hermione came down the row, smiling from under her straw hat. Lips stained red and a blush on her cheeks, she looked positively gorgeous.

“You look positively plebian.”

A knowing smile on her face, Hermione replied “Aww, thank you! Isn’t this fun? How many do you have?”

“How is this fun? Why must we apparate to the other side of the country, put on boots that…ugh…other people have worn, and perform such menial labour, all for something we could get at the local market…”

Looking into his pail, she continued as if he hadn’t said anything “I think we might have enough for me to try making jam! Won’t that be exciting?”

As Hermione continued to talk, Draco tuned her out in order to pout. But really to stare at how pretty she was looking. She prattled on about jam and jars and stewing and…other stuff. Although he should have been trying to convince her to give up her crazed notions, or, when that didn’t succeed, which it never did, fearing for his sanity, years of being married to the witch in front of him had dulled his reactions of trying to apparate far, far away whenever Hermione came up with a new hobby. He knew that the next couple of weeks would see a sweaty, harried Hermione emerging from the kitchens with so called jams that he would have to taste. He mentally scoffed at the thought. Jams came from the store, thank you very much. Whatever concoction she would create would have as much resemblance to jam as bobutor pus.

Since the pout wasn’t working anyways, and as the thought of spreading bobutor pus over toast made him nauseous, he put off anticipating future pain for generating present pleasure.

Bending down, he softly pressed his lips against Hermione’s. Even while kissing him back, she continued to try and talk until he firmly shut her up by deepening the kiss. This was good. No matter how many times they kissed, it never failed to make Draco feel better. Nor to arouse him. He gripped Hermione and slid a mosquito-bitten hand to the small of her back, nipping on her lower lip before letting his tongue tangle with hers again. After a few minutes of increasingly frantic snogging, Draco pulled up for a breath of air and rested his forehead against hers.

“So if you have enough berries, does that mean we can leave now?”

Opening her eyes, Hermione smirked to see the look of arousal battling with pleading on Draco’s face. “You want to go home?”

“Yeeeeesssss” Draco whined.

“Well, I’m ready to go, but you’ll have to convince the others”

Draco looked over to where she was pointing to see a blonde middle-aged couple feeding each other raspberries that they had picked. The lovesick expressions on their faces as they shared the berries and then proceeded to taste them off of each others lips made Draco want to throw something at them. They were soon bowled over by two little girls, both with bushy hair. One a blonde, the other a brunette, they jumped on their grandparents chattering about how many berries they had picked and how many more they had eaten. The state of their previously very pretty dresses was a testament to that. Strolling leisurely along hand in hand behind the girls and carrying their pails was another couple, this time both with chocolate brown hair. The two couples gathered up the grandkids, the assorted pails and hats, and turned to look their way.

Draco sighed. He could see from their collective expressions that raspberry picking was not over for the day. As much as he wanted to leave, Draco couldn’t deny the puppy dog looks the girls, hell, even Hermione and his own parents, were giving them. Fine. Let them pick their stupid berries. But he wasn’t going to be happy about it.

He even said as much.

“Fine. Let them pick their stupid berries. But I’m not going to be happy about it”

Hermione gave the group a wave to signal they could continue and then turned to look up at her husband with a wicked grin.

“Aww poor baby. Is there anything I can do to make you happy then?”

Draco smiled at the shrieks of laughter coming from the group. Then he turned and smirked down at his wife. Pulling off her straw hat, he swooped down to meet her.

Maybe it was a lot of work, but as he tasted the tartness of her tongue, Draco thought there was something to be said about raspberry picking.

A/N: Please, please, please review! Leave critiques, tell me it sucked (and why), point out mistakes, whatever! Just give me feedback!

Snape...

2007-08-06T20:38:01Z

******** SPOILER WARNING ********

And here's some Snape/Lily, if you feel like getting weepy, by *snapesnogger,
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/60718972/
by ~bluemoonchild
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/61543721/
more by *snapesnogger
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/61206380/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/60628128/
*SNIFF, SNIFF, SOB*

To cheer you up, cuz Snape can be funny, by *snapesnogger,
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/60859138/

*note to self: ~bluemoonchild lives in AB!

Freddy...

2007-08-06T19:25:43Z

The whole LJ thing...

2007-08-05T10:37:49Z

I just spent about 3 hours researching and reading up on the whole LJ thing...and I'm pretty upset. Right, well, in case anyone is reading this, and you don't know what this is all about, others have said it better, so I won't explain...and since I don't know how to link,

Here is the comm dedicated to end fandom censorship:
<http://community.livejournal.com/innocence_jihad/profile>
(I specifically rec going to the liz marcs link on the profile page and clicking and reading all the links therein to familiarize yourself with the history of all this if you don't know already)

The last couple of entries in the comm outline the situation. Basically, two long-time HP artists, ponderosa121 and elaboration had their journals permanently deleted because of work they submitted that apparently depicted 'inappropriate' material. Both of these were of well-known artists, in that even I've heard of them or seen their work, and I haven't even been in the fandom that long.

Here, you'll find not only the links to the two letters sent by lj to both ponderosa and elaboration, but a bunch of links to others keeping track of this...
<http://users.livejournal.com/_lore/304372.html?view=2106868#t2106868">
Sam, in particular, says it well:
<http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/1382363.html>

Ponderosa's work, an NC-17 Snarry, to me did not look like Harry was underaged, nor that it was non-con. Looking at the actual emails sent by the LJ abuse team to the two, there isn't even a warning to remove the material, a chance for defence, or a clear violation, because, to the best of my knowledge, neither image was designated as under-age, and therefore could not be depicting a adult-child sexual relationship, or pedophilia. This is the issue "Warriors of Innocence", the outside group that has previously pressured LJ, is against. I don't know much about this group, except what I read on their last couple of posts on their website. Now, I myself have been a victim of pedophilia, and I fully support efforts to stop those who are pedophiles from targeting kids. But at the same time, there is a difference between actual pedophelia, and portraying possibly pedophilic situations. And that too with fictional characters. And even if this possibly pedophilic, fictional images may give pedophile ideas (as if they need any) or wank material, it seems like an extreme and unwarranted measure for LJ to permanently ban the artists without a warning or a chance to speak up. Also, this material was posted on pornish_pixies, which aside for being an over 18 website (which was amongst concerns), was also targeted by LJ before, resulting in the shutting down of the entire community for a while. Personally, seeing as this is the second time that something like this has happened on LJ (at least as far as I know), I'm supporting a move to another journal site. Or, better yet, I hope that a fan run journal site like the one being created by twocorpses takes off and we all move there.
I'm in solidarity with Pond and Elaboration.

By the way, this is awesome:
<http://evidux.livejournal.com/50074.html>

On a complete sidenote, and because I don't know how to link or make a memory, here is the masterlist of DH art as compiled by bibliophile20 <http://bibliophile20.livejournal.com/72529.html>

Ok....Much Better

2007-08-02T19:30:10Z

Lol, sorry to anyone who read the last post...I kind of sort of figured out the layout thing, in that the present one doesn't make me want to chew my arm off in a fit of boredom.
Onto bigger and better things...
-I am in a slump where I cannot seem to do anything productive. The amount of time I spend doing my homework and the number of fanfics I read being inversely proportional, it's no wonder my GPA is going down the drain.
Home remedies for blah-ness anyone?
-Once I am finished my summer course, I am going to take the Perfect Imagination beta test, and hopefully *crosses fingers* become an accredited beta reader. I also have a fanfic lined up to beta, and hopefully by then I'll have a couple more so that before the fall semester starts, I can have some solid beta experience under my belt. If anyone is reading this (Hello? *echoes*), and would like to give me said experience, I'd love to beta or even second beta anything.
-The plumber came to fix the bathtub. He was hot. I was in my pajamas and hadn't even brushed my teeth. Enough said.
-Two of my family members are sick, and a third lost her job. I don't know what to do. I cried, but then I realized that that doesn't solve anything. The only thing I can think of to do is to do really well in my course. That is obviously not happening.
-I discovered daily_deviant and hogwart_today. Am hooked. Have found so many cool authors and artists already.
-I wish I didnt have schoooooool.
-I started writing a fic. As in, I've written the first paragraph. I have a very, very, very vague plot in mind, but I don't think I'm up to it. I need to air the idea out. Any olunteers to hear crazy story?
-I have my period. *hurts*.
-It's my turn to cook...shit.
-Now I'm just rambling. But this is really cool; I feel better just letting it out. Wow. I should really blog more often.

Signing off,
Kara

AHHHH!

2007-08-02T18:17:11Z

*flails wildly*
*takes a breath*
Ok, first of all, thank you to those who left kind words of welcome (back). Secondly, (and this is where the AHHHH! comes in) how...do...omg...i want to kill...
No, but seriously, how do you people do layouts? How do you manage to put pretty pictures up, and make all the colours go together and stuff? Do I have to know html and *shivers* CSS? What is that anyhow?

Many hugs to anyone who can decipher my rambling and help?

The Readings and Writings of an Addict - Yes, I'm Alive...

2007-07-23T03:47:38Z

Hello...
My last entry was a year and 21 days ago (i think...*does math*). Lots of stuff has happened in my RL since then, including my mom having a heart attack, me moving half way across the country, switching universities, my family scattering, and my leaving my parents house to move out on my own. Throughout all these changes, hpff has remained a contstant source of escape. Livejournal, however, I lost touch with soon after my last post, and haven't had the inclination (read: guts) to come back and face it. But I just want to say a huge, huge, huge thank you to those people who friended me a year ago, who actually read my posts and left comments, and allowed me a brief taste of what its like to be part of this wonderful fandom. First of all, thank you shag_me_draco, for teaching me fun stuff like italisizing and bolding; for helping out a newbie and for all of your awesome fics, as well as being such a truly...nice person. I hope bridgets_cross, my fellow newbie, had a better yrear in the fandom than I did (which, by looking at the number of your posts, I'm sure is true). Thanks to raffyv, as Goddess of All Things Dramione, who has kept me in touch with the fandom with (sometimes biweekly) recs on the yahoo group, and whose unfailing good humour always makes my day go better. You guys especially, but everyone else who helped or befriended me, thank you. I know I don't deserve a second chance at being your friend, but I'll try hard to earn it.

Lol, I meant to write this post as my take on Deathly Hallows, and now I'm too exhausted to do so. I sprained my ankle dancing yesterday, and the pain is getting to me. But I'm so glad I took the step and wrote on lj again, and that hopefully, one of you guys will read the above and see how much I valued your friendship. DH is left to the next post then.

Enjoy the book!

The Readings and Writings of an Addict - Dark Chocolate

2006-06-29T06:08:05Z

Presently on my desktop - two teacups; one filled with freshly brewed jasmine, the other empty of it's orange pekoe; a jar of nutella with a spoon sticking out of it; a box of arrowroot biscuits; and a half eaten slab of dark chocolate.

Yesterday, on recommendation by bunney, I read the The Nietzsche Classes by beringae (on fanfiction). i am not one for angst, simply because I like being in control of my moods, and when I read or hear something sad, I can't seem to be happy. Anyways, I stupidly did not read the genre for this particular story, and ended up deeply involved in a highly intelligent, informative, and well-written fic, which also. Sad? Yes. Angsty? Yes. But also quite good.

But, at least for me, the effects of reading an angsty fic are similar to those of being drinking (or so I've heard). There is the buzz, the haze, the nausea, and the hangover. Or, the first excitement, the impatient reading, the heart-clenching sadness, and the morning-after moodiness. My morning-after effects were also magnified by my finding my memo-book, which screamed at me in highlighted sentences all the things that I had been putting off, and how I was incredibly screwed. But, of course, me being me, I decided that instead of actually attempting to do any of those things, ignoring the world for a day was a much better option. So I spent my day in a sad, guilty blur, punctuated by moments of panic when I would remember the oh-so long list.

While distracting myself, however, I managed to spot a great sale at Chapters, and bought Northanger Abbey, Crime and Punishment (mentioned in the fic), the Odessey, and some selected writings of Socrates (or rather, Plato) all for $25. For this, I am excited, since I've got good reading material for the next few weeks, and I won't have to visit the dratted library. How I love sales.

Anyways, after a slight respite from the moodiness in watching Peter Pan, I'm back to feeling like I do when the monthly visitor comes by. Dammit, I want fluff.

Quotes:
"I do believe in fairies, I do! I do!" - Peter Pan

"Merlin, Granger. Have mercy, will you? Every time you speak you undo me." And then he was kissing her, broken, silly little girl and all. - Draco in The Nietzsche Classes by Beringae

The Readings and Writings of an Addict - Still Drooling

2006-06-25T22:33:00Z

So I just read tamlane's most recent update to her Charlie/Hermione fic Play the Odds, and wow. Incredibly hot stuff, with great characters, and just wow. I would rec it, but who am I kidding? I'm the only one reading my page so far. Lol, I feel like such a loser. *sniff*.
Ah, mocking self-pity. Is there anything more amusing?
Anyways, if anyone is reading this, I'd like to put it out there that I'd love to get some beta experience (and by that I mean editing experience), so if any hp writers need a beta let me know.
Okay, and I also need some help...how do you put people's lj names into comments and such as links? And how do you link something like a your own story in an entry? And how do you italisize and bold things? And how do you use this big thing on my desk, this...this computer thing?
Lol, any help is appreciated.

The Readings and Writings of an Addict - My First Entry

2006-06-23T19:44:32Z

So I've been lurking around all things Harry Potter online, and finally being annoyed by the inability to comment, and moreover feeling like a lurker, I decided to create a livejournal. I've never had one of these before, so it's a learning curve, but no-one likes to feel like a lurker.

I just used that word more times in one paragraph than I think I ever have. Fun word though.

Anyways, I don't know how to go about this, so I tink I'll just attempt to go friend those lovely authors who make me smile, and hope they friend me back. Lol, I feel like I'm going to go ask a celebrity for an autograph. *sniff*, I'm a nobody. haha.

Yay, I'm finally a bonafide, recognized, official-ized, Harry Potter fan(atic). Whoo!