Ten Facts fic
This is both satisfying and addictive, so two more sets for two more fandoms:
------------------------------
Title: Ten Facts About Henry and Catherine Darcy
Fandom: Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
Fanverse: First Impressions
Blurb: ... yeah.
Major Characters: Henry Bennet, Catherine Darcy (gasp, shock)
Length: One-shot
Warning: uh, people are irritated by Jane?
-------------------------------
(10) His family calls him Hal, the neighbours call him Harry, and his friends call him Bennet.
Catherine calls him Henry.
Her cousins call her Kate, her sister and aunt call her Catherine, and everybody else calls her Miss Darcy or madam.
Catherine doesn't know what Henry will call her.
(9) Henry is delicate as a child, and his mother goes into hysterics whenever he so much as sneezes. He doesn't know why, until Kitty comes along, gasping and coughing her way through infancy.
Neither Mrs Bennet nor anybody else evinces the slightest concern for her.
At eight, Catherine is tall for her age and bursting with health. Given the rudiments of her father's principles and her mother's manners, she is largely left to run wild about Pemberley -- until she tumbles from a tree and breaks her arm.
Charming, flighty Lady Anne is white with horror when she accompanies Lady Catherine into the sickroom. She lifts Catherine's face up to the light and turns it this way and that, wiping the tears off her cheeks.
"Thank God!" she tells her sister. "Her face is not scratched."
(8) When Henry is fifteen, he doesn't want to marry anyone, ever.
If he has to, though, he wants it to be someone like his uncle Gardiner's new wife.
Catherine is a bridesmaid at her cousin Cassandra's wedding. It is all frightfully dull: Lady Darcy trying to cry, Lavinia and Philadelphia yawning through the breakfast, Sir George and Cassandra stealing long, meaningful glances at each other.
Catherine wishes Lord Rochford and Captain Fitzwilliam had come; they are not Darcys, of course, but at least she would have someone to talk to.
(7) Henry loves singing.
Catherine also loves his singing, though it doesn't prevent her from pointing out every error.
She plays the pianoforte badly, because she cannot be bothered to practise -- and also, perhaps, because her lessons came to an abrupt end when she flung her book at the music master's head.
She sings beautifully, because she always had a gift for it -- and so, naturally, she slaves away at it for ten years, honing her talent to a sharp edge. For Catherine, mediocrity carries with it the fires of hell: she will be magnificent, or she will be nothing at all.
(She still loathes performing.)
(6) Henry’s eyes are grey, but so dark that they are nearly always mistaken for brown.
Of all Mrs Bennet's children, only Henry and Lydia have inherited her eyes.
Catherine has deep blue eyes.
She cannot say who they came from -- not because she has the slightest uncertainty about her parentage (heaven forbid!), but because Lady Anne's mother was a Carteret, and the Howard-Darcy-Carterets have bound themselves together so tightly that it's difficult to say where one family ends and the other begins. The degree of resemblance varies, but her grandmothers were first cousins twice over and -- well, it is just difficult to say.
(5) Henry does not fall in love with Catherine when he reads her letter.
He still wants to kill Wickham for touching her.
Catherine does not fall in love with Henry after that disastrous scene at Hunsford.
No, she intends to accept him for weeks before that, even though he is not rich, high-born, well-connected, or even exceptionally handsome, because she loves him. And nothing that happens there, or at Pemberley, or in Hertfordshire, alters that in the slightest.
(4) Henry adores novels, the more sensational the better. He thinks Cecilia was nonsense, though.
When the time comes, he changes his name without a qualm.
Catherine reads voraciously: novels, essays, biographies, histories, anything she can find. She firmly believes that an accomplished woman is, above all, well-read -- which gives her a ready excuse for it.
She thinks Cecilia is a brilliant, if somewhat heavy-handed, exploration of the fascinating and complex pride-prejudice dynamic.
(3) Henry always leans backward or to the sides, but in such a manner as to imply the world would implode if he ever sat upright.
Catherine always sits upright -- in such a manner as to imply that the world would implode if she ever permitted herself the slightest slouch.
(2) Henry adores his sister Jane.
Sometimes, though, he longs to box her ears.
Catherine knows that Jane Bennet is every bit the angel Mr Bingley thinks she is, the sort of person everyone loves, the sort of woman every other woman should be.
Catherine cannot see her without longing to throw crockery at her head.
(1) Henry knows he will never be half the landlord his wife is, and doesn't particularly care.
After all, she will never be half the hostess he is.
During their engagement, Catherine sometimes worries about how they will manage Pemberley. It is hers, and she loves it with all the tranquil intensity of her peculiar disposition -- but Henry's name is just as much his, and he is prepared to give that up for her. Surely she can cede some part of her authority to him.
In the event, however, it is not necessary; Henry only laughs and says, "Good God, Catherine, what would I do that you cannot manage just as easily, and twice as well?"
(Later, when he throws himself into planning their first ball, Henry belatedly asks for his wife's contributions. Catherine looks blank, then bursts out laughing.)
------------------------------------------------------
Title: Ten Facts About Harry Potter
Fandom: Harry Potter
Fanverse: Path to Greatness
Blurb: ...
Major Characters: Harry Potter, Minerva McGonagall
Length: One-shot
Warnings: Slytherin!Harry
------------------------------------------------------
(10) Professor McGonagall is Harry’s favourite professor.
It doesn’t matter that he’s a Slytherin and she’s the Head of Gryffindor. It doesn’t matter that she’s the strictest teacher he has, and hardly ever smiles, and is often a little scary. It doesn’t even matter that he’s not particularly good at Transfiguration.
All that matters is that he was nothing, less than nothing, for ten years - and then one day, Professor McGonagall came and said this is wrong and took him away.
Harry will never forget that, as long as he lives.
(9) The first time Harry meets a wizard his own age, he’s getting measured for his robes at Madam Malkin’s.
The other boy is blond and arrogant and strongly reminiscent of Dudley.
“I’ll be in Hufflepuff, of course,” he says. “I think I’d leave if I didn’t, it’s the only decent House at Hogwarts. What about you?”
“I don’t know,” replies Harry, but he’s instantly convinced that he’d rather end up anywhere else.
Anything Zacharias Smith likes can’t be good.
(8) Harry reaches the train with plenty of time to spare.
He ends up sitting with a girl named Hermione Granger, who drafts him into her search for a toad.
He wanders around for about fifteen minutes, until he stumbles across someone else: a very large, very miserable, very lost boy of his own age.
“Hi,” says Harry. “Have you seen a toad?”
The boy sniffles. “No. Have you seen Draco?”
Harry doesn’t know what Draco is, but he introduces himself and then the boy instantly agrees to help.
(7) When Harry puts on the Sorting Hat, he almost immediately realises that he’s not going to be rushed off like Draco Malfoy (so that’s what - who - Gregory was talking about) or Susan Bones.
Not Hufflepuff, not Hufflepuff, he thinks, as loud as he dares.
The Hat stops vacillating for a moment. Not Hufflepuff, eh? it says, sounding surprised and amused. Well, I should think not.
(6) Harry ends up in Slytherin, because he likes the idea of being great, and he can’t think of any reason not to be.
He’s sorry, though, that none of his friends come with him. Apparently, Neville did manage to convince the others that Gryffindor and Slytherin aren’t either the best Houses, because Hermione gets Sorted into Ravenclaw and Gregory into Hufflepuff.
It’s sort of funny: Neville gets into Gryffindor himself. Harry’s even happy for him. He just wishes he and his only friends weren’t spread across the Houses like that.
(5) Harry likes his friends in Slytherin, but he can’t help but like Neville and Gregory and Hermione better.
(4) Harry only mentions the Dursleys in passing, and doesn’t understand why the other Slytherins are so horrified.
“The Muggles kept you in a cupboard?” says Daphne, her eyes wide.
“Well, they’re Muggles,” Draco tells her. “What can you expect?”
Even he looks shocked, though. And when they find out about the rest, they’re not just surprised, they’re furious. Not at Harry, though - for Harry, the only time he ever remembers anybody except Professor McGonagall being angry on his behalf.
So when they all write to their parents, ignoring Harry’s protests that it wasn’t that bad, the protests aren't too loud. And before he knows what’s happening people are coming to talk to him and there’s a trial and it’s in The Daily Prophet and everything.
It’s kind of embarrassing, especially when Zacharias Smith pretends to cower in a closet, but there’s a part of him that’s glad too. The Dursleys should pay for what they did to him, they should suffer, they should be humiliated -
“I hate them, I’ve always hated them,” he says passionately. Professor Snape looks almost sympathetic, but Professor Dumbledore and even Professor McGonagall seem alarmed.
“Perhaps,” she says, after a pause, “you should ask Mr Longbottom or Mr Goyle about Azkaban.”
Afterwards, he decides that even the Dursleys don’t deserve that. He’s still not sorry that he doesn’t have to live with them, though.
(3) It turns out that Harry has relatives on his father’s side, lots of relatives. He ends up with a great-aunt: she's very strange and very old and doesn't seem to know what to do with him, but she keeps him fed and clothed, and tells him all sorts of interesting stories. They get on well enough, and he's sorry when she dies a year later.
Sometimes he wonders why he wasn’t sent to live with her in the first place, but Professor McGonagall won’t say, and Harry can’t quite bring himself to ask the Headmaster.
(2) Harry is Professor Snape’s favourite student. Everybody knows it, though nobody dares say anything.
It’s odd, though: until the moment he accidentally said aloud, “I wonder what would happen if I stirred the other way,” he could have sworn that Snape hated him.
(1) Harry doesn’t like the way the other Slytherins talk about Muggles. The Dursleys were horrible, but he knows they aren’t all bad.
Still, it’s not worth fighting about.
------------------------------
Title: Ten Facts About Henry and Catherine Darcy
Fandom: Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
Fanverse: First Impressions
Blurb: ... yeah.
Major Characters: Henry Bennet, Catherine Darcy (gasp, shock)
Length: One-shot
Warning: uh, people are irritated by Jane?
-------------------------------
(10) His family calls him Hal, the neighbours call him Harry, and his friends call him Bennet.
Catherine calls him Henry.
Her cousins call her Kate, her sister and aunt call her Catherine, and everybody else calls her Miss Darcy or madam.
Catherine doesn't know what Henry will call her.
(9) Henry is delicate as a child, and his mother goes into hysterics whenever he so much as sneezes. He doesn't know why, until Kitty comes along, gasping and coughing her way through infancy.
Neither Mrs Bennet nor anybody else evinces the slightest concern for her.
At eight, Catherine is tall for her age and bursting with health. Given the rudiments of her father's principles and her mother's manners, she is largely left to run wild about Pemberley -- until she tumbles from a tree and breaks her arm.
Charming, flighty Lady Anne is white with horror when she accompanies Lady Catherine into the sickroom. She lifts Catherine's face up to the light and turns it this way and that, wiping the tears off her cheeks.
"Thank God!" she tells her sister. "Her face is not scratched."
(8) When Henry is fifteen, he doesn't want to marry anyone, ever.
If he has to, though, he wants it to be someone like his uncle Gardiner's new wife.
Catherine is a bridesmaid at her cousin Cassandra's wedding. It is all frightfully dull: Lady Darcy trying to cry, Lavinia and Philadelphia yawning through the breakfast, Sir George and Cassandra stealing long, meaningful glances at each other.
Catherine wishes Lord Rochford and Captain Fitzwilliam had come; they are not Darcys, of course, but at least she would have someone to talk to.
(7) Henry loves singing.
Catherine also loves his singing, though it doesn't prevent her from pointing out every error.
She plays the pianoforte badly, because she cannot be bothered to practise -- and also, perhaps, because her lessons came to an abrupt end when she flung her book at the music master's head.
She sings beautifully, because she always had a gift for it -- and so, naturally, she slaves away at it for ten years, honing her talent to a sharp edge. For Catherine, mediocrity carries with it the fires of hell: she will be magnificent, or she will be nothing at all.
(She still loathes performing.)
(6) Henry’s eyes are grey, but so dark that they are nearly always mistaken for brown.
Of all Mrs Bennet's children, only Henry and Lydia have inherited her eyes.
Catherine has deep blue eyes.
She cannot say who they came from -- not because she has the slightest uncertainty about her parentage (heaven forbid!), but because Lady Anne's mother was a Carteret, and the Howard-Darcy-Carterets have bound themselves together so tightly that it's difficult to say where one family ends and the other begins. The degree of resemblance varies, but her grandmothers were first cousins twice over and -- well, it is just difficult to say.
(5) Henry does not fall in love with Catherine when he reads her letter.
He still wants to kill Wickham for touching her.
Catherine does not fall in love with Henry after that disastrous scene at Hunsford.
No, she intends to accept him for weeks before that, even though he is not rich, high-born, well-connected, or even exceptionally handsome, because she loves him. And nothing that happens there, or at Pemberley, or in Hertfordshire, alters that in the slightest.
(4) Henry adores novels, the more sensational the better. He thinks Cecilia was nonsense, though.
When the time comes, he changes his name without a qualm.
Catherine reads voraciously: novels, essays, biographies, histories, anything she can find. She firmly believes that an accomplished woman is, above all, well-read -- which gives her a ready excuse for it.
She thinks Cecilia is a brilliant, if somewhat heavy-handed, exploration of the fascinating and complex pride-prejudice dynamic.
(3) Henry always leans backward or to the sides, but in such a manner as to imply the world would implode if he ever sat upright.
Catherine always sits upright -- in such a manner as to imply that the world would implode if she ever permitted herself the slightest slouch.
(2) Henry adores his sister Jane.
Sometimes, though, he longs to box her ears.
Catherine knows that Jane Bennet is every bit the angel Mr Bingley thinks she is, the sort of person everyone loves, the sort of woman every other woman should be.
Catherine cannot see her without longing to throw crockery at her head.
(1) Henry knows he will never be half the landlord his wife is, and doesn't particularly care.
After all, she will never be half the hostess he is.
During their engagement, Catherine sometimes worries about how they will manage Pemberley. It is hers, and she loves it with all the tranquil intensity of her peculiar disposition -- but Henry's name is just as much his, and he is prepared to give that up for her. Surely she can cede some part of her authority to him.
In the event, however, it is not necessary; Henry only laughs and says, "Good God, Catherine, what would I do that you cannot manage just as easily, and twice as well?"
(Later, when he throws himself into planning their first ball, Henry belatedly asks for his wife's contributions. Catherine looks blank, then bursts out laughing.)
------------------------------------------------------
Title: Ten Facts About Harry Potter
Fandom: Harry Potter
Fanverse: Path to Greatness
Blurb: ...
Major Characters: Harry Potter, Minerva McGonagall
Length: One-shot
Warnings: Slytherin!Harry
------------------------------------------------------
(10) Professor McGonagall is Harry’s favourite professor.
It doesn’t matter that he’s a Slytherin and she’s the Head of Gryffindor. It doesn’t matter that she’s the strictest teacher he has, and hardly ever smiles, and is often a little scary. It doesn’t even matter that he’s not particularly good at Transfiguration.
All that matters is that he was nothing, less than nothing, for ten years - and then one day, Professor McGonagall came and said this is wrong and took him away.
Harry will never forget that, as long as he lives.
(9) The first time Harry meets a wizard his own age, he’s getting measured for his robes at Madam Malkin’s.
The other boy is blond and arrogant and strongly reminiscent of Dudley.
“I’ll be in Hufflepuff, of course,” he says. “I think I’d leave if I didn’t, it’s the only decent House at Hogwarts. What about you?”
“I don’t know,” replies Harry, but he’s instantly convinced that he’d rather end up anywhere else.
Anything Zacharias Smith likes can’t be good.
(8) Harry reaches the train with plenty of time to spare.
He ends up sitting with a girl named Hermione Granger, who drafts him into her search for a toad.
He wanders around for about fifteen minutes, until he stumbles across someone else: a very large, very miserable, very lost boy of his own age.
“Hi,” says Harry. “Have you seen a toad?”
The boy sniffles. “No. Have you seen Draco?”
Harry doesn’t know what Draco is, but he introduces himself and then the boy instantly agrees to help.
(7) When Harry puts on the Sorting Hat, he almost immediately realises that he’s not going to be rushed off like Draco Malfoy (so that’s what - who - Gregory was talking about) or Susan Bones.
Not Hufflepuff, not Hufflepuff, he thinks, as loud as he dares.
The Hat stops vacillating for a moment. Not Hufflepuff, eh? it says, sounding surprised and amused. Well, I should think not.
(6) Harry ends up in Slytherin, because he likes the idea of being great, and he can’t think of any reason not to be.
He’s sorry, though, that none of his friends come with him. Apparently, Neville did manage to convince the others that Gryffindor and Slytherin aren’t either the best Houses, because Hermione gets Sorted into Ravenclaw and Gregory into Hufflepuff.
It’s sort of funny: Neville gets into Gryffindor himself. Harry’s even happy for him. He just wishes he and his only friends weren’t spread across the Houses like that.
(5) Harry likes his friends in Slytherin, but he can’t help but like Neville and Gregory and Hermione better.
(4) Harry only mentions the Dursleys in passing, and doesn’t understand why the other Slytherins are so horrified.
“The Muggles kept you in a cupboard?” says Daphne, her eyes wide.
“Well, they’re Muggles,” Draco tells her. “What can you expect?”
Even he looks shocked, though. And when they find out about the rest, they’re not just surprised, they’re furious. Not at Harry, though - for Harry, the only time he ever remembers anybody except Professor McGonagall being angry on his behalf.
So when they all write to their parents, ignoring Harry’s protests that it wasn’t that bad, the protests aren't too loud. And before he knows what’s happening people are coming to talk to him and there’s a trial and it’s in The Daily Prophet and everything.
It’s kind of embarrassing, especially when Zacharias Smith pretends to cower in a closet, but there’s a part of him that’s glad too. The Dursleys should pay for what they did to him, they should suffer, they should be humiliated -
“I hate them, I’ve always hated them,” he says passionately. Professor Snape looks almost sympathetic, but Professor Dumbledore and even Professor McGonagall seem alarmed.
“Perhaps,” she says, after a pause, “you should ask Mr Longbottom or Mr Goyle about Azkaban.”
Afterwards, he decides that even the Dursleys don’t deserve that. He’s still not sorry that he doesn’t have to live with them, though.
(3) It turns out that Harry has relatives on his father’s side, lots of relatives. He ends up with a great-aunt: she's very strange and very old and doesn't seem to know what to do with him, but she keeps him fed and clothed, and tells him all sorts of interesting stories. They get on well enough, and he's sorry when she dies a year later.
Sometimes he wonders why he wasn’t sent to live with her in the first place, but Professor McGonagall won’t say, and Harry can’t quite bring himself to ask the Headmaster.
(2) Harry is Professor Snape’s favourite student. Everybody knows it, though nobody dares say anything.
It’s odd, though: until the moment he accidentally said aloud, “I wonder what would happen if I stirred the other way,” he could have sworn that Snape hated him.
(1) Harry doesn’t like the way the other Slytherins talk about Muggles. The Dursleys were horrible, but he knows they aren’t all bad.
Still, it’s not worth fighting about.