SQ drabbles

[shimotsuki]

When I first started writing fanfiction, I used to participate in the "Official Drabble Thread" at The Sugar Quill, which had weekly prompts for "drabbles" (triple-drabbles?) of up to 300 words. It was fun to interact with the other drabble writers and get feedback, and I used these to try out some ideas that later made it into some of my longer fics.

Unfortunately, the Quill has downsized now that the Harry Potter series is over, and the ODT archives are no longer available. I'm planning to excavate my drabbles from somewhere deep inside my hard drive and post them here eventually. In the meantime, this is a placeholder post to remind me to do that.

And I've recently learned that some of the Drabblers have found a new home on LiveJournal, at sq_drabblers.

ETA: Aha, the Quill archives seem to have come back. I'll put the links back here, too, for reference.

Drabbles, in chronological order by setting. Rated G unless otherwise indicated.

• [at SQ] A Transfiguration lesson has been disrupted...again. Marauder-era.
  
  
  Prompt: gift | 298 words
  
  Minerva surveyed the smoking wreck of the Transfiguration classroom. Her gaze panned slowly over upended tables, broken chairs, and haphazardly scattered textbooks with their pages still gently fluttering.
  
  The classroom was silent as a tomb. Wide-eyed students held their breath, obviously expecting another explosion — but one from Minerva this time. So she produced the tiniest of smiles, carefully designed to lighten the atmosphere. "I trust no one has been hurt, beyond a few singed robes?"
  
  "No, Professor," came a chorus of relieved murmurs.
  
  "Then you may leave early today. Go back to your dormitories and get cleaned up before your next lesson." They filed gratefully past, one by one, until—"You four will stay a moment, please."
  
  Once the room had emptied, she crossed her arms and frowned severely down at their upturned faces. "Your assignment was to Transfigure an ottoman into a pig. A pig, gentlemen. Not a baby dragon."
  
  Pettigrew looked a little cowed. Lupin was trying his very hardest to look respectful; he had almost managed to suppress his delighted smile. But Potter and Black didn't even pretend to look repentant — they were each wearing a grin wider than a Quidditch pitch is long.
  
  Minerva sighed. "Why do I seem to have these conversations with you more often than any other students in the history of Hogwarts?" She let her gaze drift wearily toward the window, trying to think of a task to set for detention that might finally manage to slow this lot down for a couple of days.
  
  There was a mutter, and stifled laughter.
  
  Her head snapped around. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Black?"
  
  He looked up at her with that disarming smile. "I only said, Professor..."
  
  "Yes?"
  
  "...that it must be a gift."
  
  She lost the battle. Her lips twitched.
  
  
  
• [at SQ] Sirius may be a desperate fugitive, but at least he's a desperate fugitive with a large bank account. PoA.
  
  
  Prompt: gold | 185 words
  
  Sirius was spending most of his time as Padfoot these days. It was the best way to stay warm (and find things to eat) in the snowy forest. But he transformed back into human form as soon as he saw his friend the ugly ginger cat, trotting through the drifting snow with a piece of parchment and a Self-Inking Quill held carefully in his sharp teeth.
  
  "Thanks, mate." Sirius rubbed a grimy finger along the cat's cheek, earning a rumbling purr. "You're brilliant, you know that?"
  
  He thought for a moment, and then began to write, balancing the parchment on his knee. The freezing wind made him shiver, even here under the trees, but he managed to keep his hand steady and his scrawl legible. He signed the letter with a flourish—not his own name, of course, but that wouldn't matter. Once the management of Quality Quidditch Supplies discovered how much gold had been transferred from his Gringotts vault to their coffers, they'd be happy to send off the Firebolt to Mr. Harry Potter, care of Hogwarts School, without asking any questions at all.
  
  
  
• [at SQ] Vernon's unexpected news makes Petunia remember Sirius. PoA>GoF.
  
  
  Prompt: run | 299 words
  
  Petunia heard the car pull into the driveway. Then the front door opened, and voices floated down the hallway to the kitchen.
  
  "Fine," she heard Vernon fume. "Fine. But you can carry it yourself."
  
  The door slammed, and something heavy went thumping up the stairs. Vernon plodded into the kitchen, looking slightly shell-shocked.
  
  Petunia looked up from the silver she was polishing, her eyes wide. "You're letting him keep his...his things in his bedroom?"
  
  Vernon grunted. "Did you know the boy had a godfather?"
  
  "A godfather?" Caught off guard, Petunia had a sudden vision of that dreadful Potter and those horrible friends of his—what were their names...? "Who is it?"
  
  "Dunno." Vernon helped himself to a slice of lemon meringue pie and swallowed a large forkful before going on. "The boy says he's a murderer, though." He wiped a drop of sweat from his brow with his handkerchief. "Says he's broken out of wizard prison, and he's on the run. Plans to check in and see if the boy's happy."
  
  "A murderer!" Petunia's heart stopped. No wonder those pictures on the news last summer had seemed so familiar. Black! Black was that Potter freak's best friend!
  
  "So," said Vernon wearily, "I thought we'd better let him have his ruddy trunk in his room this summer. Otherwise, he might complain to his godfather—and then where will we be?"
  
  Petunia nodded absently, staring at her upside-down reflection in a shiny, shiny spoon. Somehow, when she thought of Black, she didn't think of murder. She thought of the lemon in her tea becoming a goldfish, or of pansies suddenly sprouting out of Lily's hair.
  
  She shook her head to dispel the memories. "Just goes to show you," she said, rather vaguely. "Those people are capable of absolutely anything."
  
  
  
• [at SQ] Molly makes good on her promise to the Headmaster. GoF>OotP. [An early-draft teaser for Ch 2 of All Will Be In Order.]
  
  
  Dumbledore
  
  [Original SQ post]
  
  
  
  
• [at SQ] Molly finds that Percy isn't ready to come home yet. GoF>OotP.
  
  
  sustain
  
  
  
  
• The twins discover the Marauders. GoF>OotP. [Revised and incorporated into Ch 3 of All Will Be In Order.]
  • [at SQ] Part 1
    
    butterbeer
    
    
    
  • [at SQ] Part 2
    
    travel
    
  
  
  
• [at SQ] Fred and George have escaped from Umbridge...now what? OotP.
  
  
  Prompt: The Quibbler | 294 words
  
  Fred pulled his Cleansweep into a tight turn and looped giddily around his twin. "We've done it! We're free!"
  
  George, whose own broom was still dangling the chain and iron peg that had held it captive in the old toad's office, returned the grin. "Fame and fortune, here we come!"
  
  They flew on in silence as the last glorious rays of the sunset faded into the chilly twilight of an early spring evening. In the near darkness, George could no longer see his brother's face, but he could feel Fred's glee gradually drain away as he began to think things through.
  
  "Mum won't much like it that we've left all our things behind in the dormitory," Fred observed, finally voicing his worry.
  
  George snorted. "Mum won't much like it that we've left school."
  
  Fred sent his broom into another loop, but this one looked somewhat perfunctory. "Maybe we'd better go straight to the new flat tonight, and put off telling her until tomorrow."
  
  "I can't believe you were seriously considering anything else."
  
  "Rent, food, new clothes." Fred shivered as they flew through a patch of mist. "Warm jackets. We'd better start making sales right away, or we'll tear through all of Harry's gold."
  
  "Know what we need?" said George suddenly. "Advertising! It'll take two weeks to get the shop all stocked up and ready to open. We can start running spots in the Prophet and the Quibbler. Whet people's appetites. By the time we open, they'll be beating down the door!"
  
  "Brilliant!" Another loop, and this time it seemed that Fred meant it again. "Look, we've been planning for years. We can do this."
  
  "Of that, I have no doubt," George agreed. "But..."
  
  "I know." Fred sighed. "We still have to tell Mum."
  
  
  
• [at SQ] Christmas lunch at the Burrow, where Percy meets the parsnips. HBP.
  
  
  familiar
  
  
  
  
• [at SQ] Two Order members, who have been avoiding each other, find themselves assigned to the same mission. HBP. [A revised version of this scene has been incorporated into Landslide, a fic-in-progress from the Kaleidoscope series.]
  
  
  meeting
  
  
  
  
• [at SQ] Are times changing for werewolves after the war? Post-war. [This one didn't work so well as a drabble, so I tried a ficlet version too. Now (after the DH release), I'm thinking I'll bring Elspeth and Callie into the Warp and Weft post-war AU series, but probably not quite this way.]
  
  
  werewolf
  
  
  .

Comments

[eshesh.livejournal.com]

Hi, just popping over to your LiveJournal to see what else you've written. I enjoyed reading your entries on the Sugar Quill drabble thread, especially the "twins discover the Marauders" p 1&2.

"We'll be here for a while," said Fred hopefully, eyeing Sirius — and even Lupin! — with profound awe.

Man, that last line was great. Even Lupin! Hehehe.

Maybe I'll try my hand over on SQ sometime, too. Er... But can you tell me what on earth is a Tonx filter...? :)

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

Hi! Glad you liked the trans-generational troublemakers drabbles. Someday I'd like to write about the first, say, week in Grimmauld Place when Sirius, Remus, and the Weasleys are all getting used to each other...

Maybe I'll try my hand over on SQ sometime, too.

SQ is my favorite fanfiction site. Unfortunately, their actual story archive doesn't seem to have had open submissions for new authors since well before I discovered the site, so my fiendish plot to get a story accepted there looks hopeless! But some of the discussion forums allow for the posting of original stories. In addition to the Drabble thread where I've been playing around, there are other open challenges; there's one to describe what someone would see in the Mirror of Erised, for example, or one to describe the first meeting between two characters who have not met in canon.

Er... But can you tell me what on earth is a Tonx filter...? :)

The SQ forums (as opposed to the actual archived stories) have a bunch of "filters" that automatically change certain strings in what you type into other strings when your response is posted to the forum. Some of them appear to come from site admins' pet peeves, so if you type "'Mione" your post appears with "Hermione" instead, and "2day" gets converted to "threeday" (that one amuses me). But there are other random filters that make no sense and are probably in-jokes. One of these is that "Tonks/rocks/socks" always get converted to "Tonx/ROX/SOX".

If you read the Test forum, you'll often see people playing around, trying to trigger as many of the filters as they can. Here's one example (http://www.sugarquill.net/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=3&view=findpost&p=397533). (Of course, we only see how they come out -- I don't know what the triggering strings are for half of these.)

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

...wow, I was trying to find the old comm, googled it and found this. I didn't know you were a Quiller! Or if I did I forgot. What was your name there? The same? I did think your name looked familiar when I added you to my flist, but we were both in metamorfic_moon too, so. I was Author By Night at SQ.

(Although I'm confused, was this entry edited? It seems to have been posted in 2006 but I don't think SQ downsized until 2008 before closing for good in 2009?)

Love the drabbles!

ETA: Looked at your fic list - yup, I remember those fics actually. :)

This makes me miss Sugar Quill...