Unintended (Harry Potter story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Unintended
Author(s):	furiosity
Date(s):	2006 or before
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Harry Potter
External Links:
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Unintended is a slash Harry Potter story by furiosity.

Discussion of This Story

From Slashcast Insider Interview with furiosity in 2006:

Emma: Another recent fic of yours in Unintended, which is a wartime fic that also has a lot of darkness in it. And I think in this one, as compared to the last one, the darkness, especially in Harry, seems to come out through the sexuality of the people. Where did the idea for that story come from?

[furiosity]: Well, that was written for Reversathon and I actually- I actually backed myself into a corner because the recipient wanted bottom!Harry, which is something that I don't write, as a rule, in Harry/Draco because I just don't see Harry bottoming in that relationship unless they're already in a relationship. I mean, like, first time, 'cause most of my fic tends to be first time, so I had to write this story where I basically had to take a character that I usually write a certain way and I had to write him completely differently. And so, I just gave Harry a kink. He bottomed because he wanted to, and that's not something I had done before and in order for that to happen, I had to put the both of them into a place where there would not be any Weasleys or Order members or anybody else, you know, getting in the way, which was how I decided where I would set it. And then after I had the setting, I had to ask myself that, you know, "Well, why would Harry be there and why would Draco go there?" And it just basically grew from there. But really it all started with the fact that, you know, Harry's got this kink and he needs somebody to help him and Draco's going to come along and help him out.

Emma: What I think is really amazing about that story, though, it picks up very nicely from Half Blood Prince, and you've got Draco who is clueless about what's been happening in the world, doesn't know where Snape's allegiances lie, he really doesn't know much about anything that's happening. And so, with him as the narrator, we don't either. I mean, it's fantastic because things get unfolded to us at the same rate they do as Draco. I think we kind of feel his isolation and you can really get inside his head and see why he gets into this sort of fucked up relationship with Harry in the story. I mean, I thought it was really interesting that way - really psychological.

f: I'm glad it worked because I sweated bullets over that fic, just 'cause it was a dynamic that I'm completely not familiar with.

Emma: So as a writer, do you really appreciate challenges like that or are you really glad that you did it, or in retrospect would you just assumed have written something else?

f: I'm glad that I did it and I would probably do it again, because it proves to me further that, in Harry Potter fanfic of any sort, you can do anything. You can really take any character and do what ever you want with them, provided that you think about why. Because for me, the biggest part of writing this story was selling it to myself because if I don't believe in it, how can I write it? And I actually made myself believe that if the events were to unfold this way then this might happen. That's very important for me when reading and when writing, and so I think that it was basically a lesson in humility where you kind of have to remember that your interpretation and the way you prefer to write things is not necessarily the one, true way. If you can put your own preferences aside and write something for someone else because they prefer it like that and make it believable in any way, even if only one person believes it and that's you, then, you know, that's pretty much all fanfic is about.

Emma: That's really generous too, when you think about it. I mean, it's generous for you as a writer to say, "This isn't my thing, but because it's for somebody else I'm going to stretch myself and create something for somebody else..."

f: I don't think it's generous, I think it's- I don't know. I think it's only common sense. I mean, if somebody- If you're writing a gift, like if you're giving somebody a gift, you're not going to give them something that, you know- that you might like. You've gotta give them something they might like. Which is how I approach these challenges.

Emma: That's a good point. Well, this story is also interesting in that it has two different endings. Can you explain why?

f: Well, that was also completely- it was all because the challenge. The recipient wanted a happy ending and I didn't. When I posted it to the Reversathon community, I posted it with the happy ending. When the Reversathon participants were revealed, I just posted my original ending the way I intended to write it. It wasn't even necessary, I suppose, to post both, but I sort of felt like, "You know, well, it's my journal. I'm going to post this ending in my journal because that's the one I wanted."

Emma: Something that I thought was really interesting about that as a reader is that it gives you the opportunity to really compare the two different endings in a way that you hardly ever get to do. I mean, when you read a story and it has either a happy ending or a really angsty ending, you can, as the reader, think to yourself, "Oh, I would have done it differently," or, "Oh, I wish it had ended differently." But to see the writer give you two different versions of that - it's very interesting.

f: Yea. You know, it's actually funny because in feedback, when I posted both endings, when I posted the story with the original ending and the recipient’s ending, I had pretty much equal amounts of people saying, "Well, I like the happy one better," and then saying that- you know, other people saying that, "Well, I like the angsty one better." And people gave reasons for why one was better or the other was better, and they weren't just personal reasons. They were, you know, like, actual, structural reasons. One person said, "You know, well, the angsty ending doesn't really work because, you know, it really jolts you out of that, you know, claustrophobic, isolated feeling of the rest of the fic. And, you know, I said, "Well, that was sort of the point." That was why, for me, that ending worked better, because I wanted to jolt myself out of that claustrophobic feeling and give Draco an opportunity to go elsewhere and, you know, just live. Which was really- which was really the point, which was what I wanted for Draco. And then other people said, "Well, you know, the angsty ending worked better because it's more in character and because Harry needs to destroy Voldemort first. He can't go running after Draco." So, it was really interesting to see that people gave legitimate reasons for why one was better than the other.