New Fic: Burning Day, H/D (NC-17)

[ravenna_c_tan]

The reveal has taken place at H/D Holidays! And so I may now reveal to you the story I wrote, which I actually think is one of the best H/D fics I've written in quite a while, Burning Day.

And I'm posting here my "author's notes" on the fic, some of which I wrote before the story was posted, some I added after the comments started coming in. Here you go:

Title: Burning Day
Author: Ravenna C. Tan
Recipient: written for son_of_darkness
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 14,900
Summary: Changed by the long war and unhappy with his life, Harry starts a new one in Muggle London, but something is still missing. Unfulfilled, Harry looks for it in back alleys and back rooms, but it’s elusive.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Warning(s): Bondage, spanking, corporal punishment, BDSM of various kinds.

(To the fic)



"Burning Day" Author's Notes


I wrote this fic for H/D Holidays Summer 2007, for son_of_darkness, whose name I knew from various HP fic comms, but whom I really hadn't had much contact with in fandom or H/D circles. He wasn't a regular commenter in my journal nor vice versa, we'd never friended each other, but his request was quite detailed so I got a pretty good sense of what he might like. (Also, look at which comms he helps mod, all of which I'm subscribed to...) Given my penchant for BDSM-themed stories, it was clear why I was a good fit for this:

Kinks, genres or special requests: BDSM. S&M. D/s. Strict bondage. Collars and leashes. Whips/floggers/paddles/canes/crops/etc...Gags (especially ballgags). Blindfolds/hoods. Dom!sadist!Harry, sub!masochist!Draco. Corset!Draco. Corset/waist training. A Draco who needs the lifestyle, not just the occasional spanking. Perhaps sceneing in a public place, such as a fetish club, and enjoying the attention (especially Draco, lol). Games inside of play, or role-playing fantasy scenarios, such as abduction/rape fantasies, fight-y, angry sex fantasies, etc... Breath-play. Water torture (being held under water as a form of breath-play). Knife play (without the blood, just as a bit of a mind fuck, perhaps used in conjunction with a role-play scenario?) A Harry who is able to be quite cruel during play, but ultimately loving and with Draco's best interests and safety at heart. Prolonged bondage that gets uncomfortable over time. Real punishments for real infractions. Pushing and stretching the sub's limits, but not actually breaking them. Love. A bit of fluff in amongst the kink.


He also said:

Common H/D Cliches you adore: Slightly effeminate!Draco (but not stupidly so). Pretty, alabaster-skinned, almost-ethereal in his gorgeousness!Draco (lolz) Corset!Draco. Kittenish!Draco. In control!Harry. Good guy!Harry.

Common H/D Cliches you would prefer not to see: BDSM or D/s relationships without the love evident behind it. Veela!Draco. Needs-to-be-a-sub-to-alleviate-some-great-guilt!Draco.


Anyone who knows my fic pretty well--which it appears the moderators jamie2109 and nqdonne did--would see that request and think it would be a great match.

And it was.

I started trying to conceive of a story that picked up the part of the request about "scening in a public place, such as a fetish club, and enjoying the attention," which is a scenario one doesn't often see in fanfic. Well, to be honest, one rarely sees BDSM-themed fanfic that is what I call "scene aware." You see plenty of actual bondage, captivity, torture, et cetera, which is all well and good, and you even find fetish fic in which the two lovers use bondage or spanking or something else kinky. But you rarely see fic that acknowledges that there is an organized, long-standing subculture of BDSM players out there in the Muggle world (Calanthefics' Glovepuppet and related stories are a very notable exception, and I think they are why some folks guessed she was the author of "Burning Day." I highly recommend Calanthe's fic if you haven't read them!)

I think there are a couple of reasons why "the scene"/this subculture rarely appears in HP fanfic. One is that part of the fun of writing fantasy where there can be actual captivity and torture is that one doesn't need to bow to the niceties of "safe, sane, consensual" (an oft-used credo within the lifestyle/subculture). The other is that the majority of fanfic writers and readers are folks who are not a part of that subculture themselves, and maybe even only know what they know about it from Anne Rice's "Exit to Eden." So they may be shy to try to write in a milieu they don't know. Three, it's a Muggle thing. Not that there isn't plenty of H/D in which Harry and Draco interface with the Muggle world of, say, high fashion, or other specific Muggle milieus, but it is one more strike against it.

Anyway, as you might have guessed, the BDSM scene isn't unusual to me. I'm a longtime BDSM player. I thought that based on what was requested in the fic, a "scene aware" fic might be just the thing. So I tried to picture Harry leading slave!draco into a club. When I was done wiping up my drool, however, I realized that what I didn't want to write was a fictionalized scene report, which would be boring. Where's the dramatic tension? Where's the STORY there? I don't like PWP much--and whenever I read one I always end up with questions like, but how? why? what then? Et cetera.

In this one, I started to ask myself questions like, how the hell would Harry find out about this fetish club to begin with? And how did they go from blood enemies to not only lovers (a question I ask with every H/D I write...) but ones that play at kinky roles? Would they need to go outside the Wizarding world to express themselves that way, for example? If so, how would they get started down that path in the first place... Draco discovering Muggle porn maybe? Lots of cute plot bunnies there. But I wanted something more.

I wanted to think of a way to write a story that would make magic, love, and power all strands in a common thread--such that each can nearly stand in for the others.

And I realized that to write the story of them visiting a fetish club at some point in the future, I had to write the story of how they got together in the first place.

So, I thought, let's start in a postwar scenario, with Harry already somewhat in the Muggle world?

I sat down to write, and the first bit that came out turned out to be an exposition from a very hardened Harry's point of view, not just somewhat in the Muggle world, but entirely. I wrote the introduction and the first scene, right up to when Harry wanks in the bathroom after overhearing Draco give the blowjob in the bookstore, and then stalled for the longest time. How much of what Charles and Draco did was abuse and what was negotiated or allowed? I wondered. I had to decide before I could go any farther. And I kept circling back to the request and thinking, but what about the corset? I don't know why I was so hung up on the idea that there had to be corset!draco, with waist training and so on, even though that was only one bit of the request. I had put in my own "H/D clichés I hate" section "crossdressing!draco." I am down with "ethereal in his gorgeousness" Draco, but I tend to stop short of putting him in a dress or, god forbid, in make-up. Feminine!draco and feminized!draco are two different tastes to me, and the latter I just don't have. The corset really stuck in my mind.

Enter your lovely moderators into the tale, who assured me that the corset really ought not be the overriding fetish image, and they not only gave me an extension (thank you!!) they stroked my ego and convinced me that I was really the absolute right writer for the task. The story that flowed out of my renewed confidence is the one you see in the fest now, so I must thank them the way an athlete thanks a great coach. Your encouragement really did the trick.

Once I got the corset out of my head, I returned to the actual hanging question of whether Charles was kinky but dysfunctional, or outright abusive. The sodsta's love of goodguy!harry (and mine) decided that one. Nothing like having a villain in a story to bring out the latent hero in our Harry, who is poised on the edge of major change. Draco is the catalyst.

I wrote nearly the entire thing then, over the course of two days. And my concept for magic, love, and power to be all different aspects of the same thing ripened nicely.

When Harry left behind the Wizarding world he left behind magic, but also the people who loved him, and the power relationships he held as The Boy Who Lived, war hero, celebrity, et cetera. Harry rarely had a relationship with anyone in the Wizarding world where he was truly on equal footing with them. I don't come out and say it in the story, but I sort of assume that Ron was killed in the fighting, and when Hermione seems to have joined "them" from Harry's point of view, it's time to leave. But there's a void in Harry's soul, and he doesn't know how to fill it. Some might have turned to drinking or drugs to numb the awareness of the hole. Harry instead tries to scratch his itch with "deviant" sexual behaviour, playing BDSM games of varying intensities with anonymous partners, and not realizing that although he plays with power, it's also love he needs and magic he misses--or vice versa. He knows they are tied together but he really doesn't want to think about it.

Draco, meanwhile, has had all three things taken forcibly from him. He's had his magic cut off, lives in a loveless relationship in which he's abused and powerless. I try to imply in the story that Charles isn't the first of these, either. This Draco has some natural masochistic tendencies, but he doesn't enjoy being treated the way he is by Charles, and he has no hope or optimism that there may be something better out there. A Draco without the ability to do magic is not only powerless, in my view, he's lost what ability he had to love, as well. So he is not in a situation where he can seek out a functional, equal relationship. He uses Charles to survive and copes with the abuses as best he can, though at the point Harry enters the story, it's clearly gone too far and Draco needs a way out.

In my original outline, I didn't plan to have Harry actually return Draco's magic, but it quickly became clear to me that not only should he, but that thematically it was imperative. Harry, without completely realizing the full extent of it, of course, realizes he cannot live without magic/love/power any longer, and Draco serves as a catalyst for him to seek/need all three. And Draco, who desperately needs all three? At the end of a BDSM scene, the power that the bottom gives the top over him/her goes back to its original owner. Harry is very conscious of not wanting to just be the next in the sequence of men that have taken what they wanted from Draco while never giving back what he needs. His cutting comment in which he devalues Draco as a human being hurts Draco so much because it's true--it's how he was treated by Charles and other men. As an object, as a thing, worse even than you'd treat a pet.

Harry realizes that if he's going to have any kind of relationship with Draco beyond a one-night stand, that Draco's self-worth needs to be restored. And the two things he needs for that to happen are love and his magic. When Harry starts the mindfuck, he knows what he is doing is acting like he is taking them out of the realm of a "scene" and into a "real" rape scenario. He knows very well that the boundaries are there and where it will look like they have been crossed. I, as the author, was also hyperaware of them and trying to make the contrast obvious to even readers who aren't savvy about BDSM.

Originally, there was going to be more menacing on Harry's part. I was going to have a knife in there, as that was in the original request, maybe even some breathplay/ waterplay, but I ended up streamlining the scene for better flow. Nothing cuts or frightens Draco so effectively as the words Harry uses.

And there was going to be an explanation of what he did when he went up on the roof. Contacted someone in the Wizarding world, we suppose, but exactly whom and what kind of favour he called in... I decided it simply didn't fit later in the story. It's possible he always had a way to contact Hermione, but had never used it before? At some point he'll probably tell Draco exactly what went on, but not for a while. In fact, the lovemaking-without-speaking the next morning in the shower is my backlash against the urge to have them blab all the backstory explanations to each other the moment they wake up. Explanations are boring. Fucking so good that it feels like you're reading each other's minds is hot. It's a no-brainer which one I picked.

Now the title, Burning Day. Some other part of my brain must have been planning all the phoenix-and-rebirth imagery in the story because I really wasn't paying attention to it while I was wrestling with the plot and Harry's internal conflict. When I got to the end I was so excited, in fact, that I mailed it into the fest and forgot to title it. Duh. A gentle reminder from the mods and I realized, well, it simply has to be something phoenix-related. Draco lying amidst the flames of the burning bed. Harry's reference to his wand core. The candles in Harry's bedroom. Various other word choices I made throughout. Okay, so, Phoenix... hmmm. Good luck finding a phoenixy title that hasn't been used 10 times in HP fic already though, I thought. I pored over my Latin dictionaries, combed Shakespeare for phoenix or fire-related quotes... then it suddenly became obvious. A quick search of some fic archives and Google showed nothing entitled "Burning Day." Voila.

Now, as to which one of them is the one being reborn? It's both, of course.

I struggled with the point of view on this one, also. I started writing it in first person, from Harry's POV, and then when I got stalled I nearly went back to third person. I considered alternating from Draco's POV. But ultimately I think my instinct to have it from Harry's internal voice worked best. He goes right ahead and tells the reader about his moral dilemmas and how he feels about them, which is the only reason for me why the mindfuck isn't just plain terrifying. I *know* he's up to something. He's come out and said it, and his heroic instinct is in full force by that point in the story. Draco takes on the largest external changes, but Harry changes the most inside in the course of the story. If told from 3rd person, I think he might have seemed too cruel, too questionable, and the change would have been much more difficult to show. He was hardened by the war, but the canon!harry that we know and love is still in there.

I was gratified by the number of people who commented they don't usually like BDSM fics, but that they like this one. I think, ultimately, it may be the difference between scene-aware BDSM fics and ones where the bondage and sadomasochism are part of real captivity scenarios. Or maybe just that for me, a scene-aware BDSM fic has to be based on love, not cruelty. An oversimplification, but a useful one: real life BDSM is based on love, abuse is based on cruelty. I could have written a sort of dark!harry story, which would have been very hot to those of us who enjoy sadistic fantasies, but I wanted there to be "some love amongst the kink." Fluff, not really. I don't do fluff (unless you count the semi-crack like Draco the Wonder Ferret). Since the story was about how love, magic, and power are all three aspects of the same thing, I couldn't have them not fall in love.

I was a little surprised by the comment someone made about them being sad that Draco felt he had no choice but to go through with something kinky he didn't like because he was afraid of being thrown out. Hmm. There's three things wrong with that sentence. 1) Draco liked it, and likes kinky things when he consents to them, 2) he wasn't afraid of being "thrown out," and 3) he had very clear choices and understood them. I tried to make clear the subtle but important difference between Harry forcing or coercing Draco to do something and Harry empowering Draco to decide for himself.

First of all, Draco doesn't kneel naked on the bed with the paddle because he thinks that's the best way to keep Harry from kicking him out. By that point he's sure Harry is a soft touch and he could probably string him along forever if that was what he wanted. But he wants Harry, too. He does it because he wants to. He's the one who tried to seduce Harry once already and was pushed away, now he's trying a different tack. He does have a masochistic streak, but he's inexperienced at SM. He doesn't really know how to ask for or negotiate for what he wants. He's been in a string now of abusive, dysfunctional relationships for a host of reasons, but the fact remains that he likes it a bit rough. By taking the initiative the way he does, he clues Harry in beyond any doubt that he not only wants Harry, but he wants something more.

Harry clarifies his ultimatum, in fact, in case Draco thinks that if he can't go through with it, it automatically means he'll end up on the street. He makes it clear, I think, that the scene will end immediately if Draco wants out of it. But that he won't be tossed out on his arse into the rain.

Some people might ask why Harry employs this method of "safeword" with a newbie like Draco. Harry is testing Draco's commitment and his trust in Harry, as well as Draco's ability to give up control. If he allowed Draco to set the limits and to, say, warn him with words like "red" for too much, "yellow" for close to too much, and "green" for okay, he'd be handing Draco control of the scene. The whole point is to find out if Draco can actually let Harry control things, if he trusts Harry enough to let Harry have his way without needing an escape hatch. Harry reminds him that he is in control in one crucial way. Draco has the power to stop the scene completely at any time. He can walk out of the room. But he has to accept that if he does, the scene is over and won't resume if he changes his mind again. It's also Harry's way of showing this is serious to him. He's not doing it for a lark, or just to get his rocks off meaninglessly. He is making a kind of commitment, too, where he won't back down from his promises either.

As it turns out, the thought of leaving never crosses Draco's mind at all. He finds everything Harry does to him enjoyable and wonderful, if physically and mentally challenging, right up to the point of the mindfuck. Then for a while he's completely enraged, terrified, et cetera... but when he finds out it was all Harry's way of taking care of him and helping him, he loves it. That and the sheer euphoria of having his magic returned... is it any wonder they're in love by morning? They are each for the other in every way what they have each been missing in their lives. They each need love, and magic, and power of self-determination and respect in their lives. With each other, they each get that in different ways.

I hadn't been quite sure the fit was going to be so utterly perfect when I started. By the time I was really planning the mindfuck, though, I knew the "fluff amongst the kink" couldn't just be a little "aww, I love you." It was going to have to be the undeniable person-you've-been-waiting-for "big one" kind of capital-L Love. I don't write "fluff," because to me when you've put the characters through what I have, which tends to be quite heavy, the love isn't "fluffy" at all. It's meaty, instead.

Some curious notes.

I had no idea that my giftee lived in Shoreditch! I was poking around the real estate listings in London trying to figure out where Harry would live if he could live anywhere. I decided Harry's love for "old buildings" was just one way his missing the Wizarding world would manifest. Putting him in a pre-1900 factory building made sense to me. And as for Draco being in Kensington, well, I see why a lot of fics put rentboy!Draco there.

Draco's Muggle alias of Drayton Tonks came about when I decided perhaps getting any kind of a start in the Muggle world, Draco would have gone to his disowned aunt and uncle, Andromeda and Ted Tonks. Is he telling the truth when he tells Charles he needs to buy a book for his aunt? Possibly. Would he have likely starved or ended up in even worse circumstance than he was when he met Harry had he not had a little help getting identification and the like? Yes.

Mrs. Carmichael and Mrs. Brundage are shout outs to booksellers I know and love. If there'd been room in the story, we might have seen more of them.

I must admit I've developed something of a fetish for Draco in nothing but an oxford shirt. And so have several players in the Veiled Intention role playing game where I play the part of Draco. So the scene in Draco's bedroom in Kensington is partly a nod to them. And just to float my boat. Draco half-dressed and vulnerable is sexier and more lambent and ethereal than buck-naked Draco or Draco in any kind of fetishwear.

Draco turning his toast into "toast soldiers" has become something of a tradition in my fic. As far as I'm concerned, every incarnation of Draco must eat his toast and eggs that way. This is the sort of detail I figure will give me away in fests, but I just can't help it.

All right, I've gone on long enough. Thanks to everyone who commented and loved the fic! I love you back!