I suppose if I am going to post some of my work here I ought to fill in the forms.

Who am I? I am a father of three girls who began reading them Harry Potter when my eldest was about 4 and “Prisoner of Azkaban” was published. She loved the story so much that she learned to read them herself so I do have to thank JKR for inspiring all of my daughters to read at a young age. I stumbled onto fanfiction, and began to write it during what I have taken to calling “the long summer” between the publishing of Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix. My first work was actually a fanfic for a fanfic and was published on the now defunct Gryffindor Tower website. Later more of my work was posted on GT’s successor . I ran into a problem though every time I started a novel length story: I guessed a little too well how canon was going to go. My first effort, Phoenix Reborn, was started after GoF but before OotP and began after the final battle. I envisioned Voldemort dying but Albus and Severus dying as well (not exactly prophetic I know) but then Voldie’s body was turned to sand and cast into seven spheres to be hidden around the globe. An escaped Wormtail then recovers one to attempt to revive Tom only to be defeated by Harry and then Harry, with Ginny at his side, would go off on a quest to recover and destroy the remaining six pieces of Tom to prevent him from ever being returned to life. Then OotP kills off Sirius and changes the character of Ginny from what I was planning so I began a prequel of sorts called “Adaptations” where I could set the plot for “Phoenix Reborn” to continue. The heart of that story was Harry coming to realize that in order for Voldemort to die he had to die, because the resurrection ritual tied their lives together and the prophesy ties their deaths. Then “The Half Blood Prince” gets published and my idea for the seven spheres goes out the window when JKR gives us the seven Horcruxes. Essentially the core to both of my stories were now pale copies of the canon plot so both half completed novel length stories became pointless. Since then I’ve written some shorter length stories and posted them on Phoenixsong as well as Schnoogle and Ficwad. I even started a new AU novel length story called “Like Some Song You Can’t Unlearn” that became a third novel length story I didn’t finish. I’m really quite frustrated with myself for not finishing any of them before I get distracted by something else.

Like most ff writers and many readers, I was let down by the epilogue of “Deathly Hallows” and generally of mixed feelings about many of the characters. I started fanfic as a firm H/G shipper, later enjoyed and even wrote a variety of other pairings. I have changed my postion on most of the other major characters, my feelings on Dumbledore evolving the most, from wise mage to evil manipulator and finally settling somewhere around misguided fool. I don’t really understand why people seem to hate Ron so, sure he isn’t the steadfast friend we all hoped he would be but he is a rather accurate characterization of a typical teenage boy, his emotions, feelings and understanding growing as he goes through childhood towards being an adult. I see Ron as being much like James: he starts out arrogant, childish, petty, and more than a little cruel but grows into a good man. Likewise Hermione should also be allowed to mature rather than be expected to always be an adult in a child’s body, thus her confused actions towards Harry, Ron, and even Cormac in HBP. Ginny, the object of so much vitriol, is basically a blank slate. She starts out as a fangirl, breaks away from that in OotP, becomes a girlfriend later but still she's never wholly fleshed out in the books. It leaves me wondering what happened during the 19 years between the final battle and her seeing her children off to school 19 years later. Looking at the ages of the kids, there are five years for Harry and Ginny to both grow up, become adults, and fall in love. I even wrote a one shot called “Epilogue minus 19” that gives my take on resolving some of the many open issues JKR left us. That I think will be my first post here on Fanfiction.net. I may post others but I fully intend to finish at least one of these damn novel length stories for crying out loud!