My second story is a short bit of fan fiction that takes place in the Harry Potter universe. It grew out of a stray thought that crossed my brain while watching one of the movies - How can you have an old-fashioned, British boarding school without caning?
I've done my best to be true to the canon and to the characters created by J.K. Rowling. And I hope I captured the flavor (or 'flavour,' since I tried to write in British English) of Ms. Rowling's writing. I even attempted to expand the canon just a little while staying true to the stories.
My goal was to write a story that could be dropped seamlessly between chapters 21 and 22 of "Harry Potter and the Cauldron of Fire" (if you removed the descriptions that made it a stand-alone story.)
Small details in the movies occasionally differ from details in the books. Where that happens, I chose the version that best suited my story. Or, I simply chose the version that I, personally, liked better.
In a few instances, I changed minor details from the books. Ten points toward the House Cup for anyone who spots them.
I welcome comments and I especially welcome constructive criticism.
This is the first story I've ever completed and submitted. It's the first because I had the entire story drafted in my head before starting to commit it to paper . . . I mean, to electrons.
I wrote this story to take a break from a much longer story I'm working on. I'm spinning my mental wheels trying to figure out how the final third of that story will play out.
The plot of Mrs. Prescott always was fairly linear and, I thought, pretty simple. I was surprised that the final result ran to almost 20,000 words.
A number of people have been kind enough to take the time to send me emails telling me what they thought about the story. Several wanted to read about Mr. Prescott's "session".
I never considered describing Mr. Prescott's punishment. I didn't see any way to make it different enough from his wife's "session" that it wouldn't be redundant. I briefly considered one of the epilogs having the Prescotts interacting the evening after her "session" or maybe after his first "session." I may even do that as something of a sequel if the idea ever fleshes itself out enough to produce an actual plot. But I probably won't. I simply don't like Amanda, Joseph and Patricia enough to spend time thinking about them.
Ultimately, this story is like a majority of the others I have planned. It's about righting a wrong done to someone.