47 Author's Note
Okay, I've tried, but honestly, I cannot hope to bring this story forward.
Not without Adding To support it and to weave the events acting as a framework.
The main characters will remain of course Rubeus, Tom, and Minerva. I used Dumbledore and Slughorn to offer some support to the events already, but going forward, considering the sheer scope I want this fic to have, I need to add people.
Given the fact that we're still so far from canon, I'll have to rely on the grandparents of Harry's generation to act out minor roles, and while I'll refer to the usual website as a starting point, I've already spotted instances in which (like Minerva) a character has multiple dates of birth, so I'll have to adjust accordingly.
That is to say, including this Arc , I've laid the foundations for the story: and it has been the most massive worldbuilding I have ever attempted, considering that I managed to weave characterization into it.
All the characters that I'll need you readers to have a passing familiarity with now have personalities, motivations, and main interests, so I'm finally able to return to the progression of the plot, and to push on the gas a bit.
Up until now, the story was somewhat 'still'. Sure, everyone researched or experimented, but there was precious little action, the only things actually exciting have been Hagrid's ritual and the recovery of the Diadem.
And I kind of wanted the story to be 'static' during Hagrid's time at school, because forging drama for the sake of drama isn't really up my alley, and I'm not really one for casual opponents that get forgotten going forward (I really don't want to waste time and effort on a character that I'll eventually drop).
But with the last arc we got into a position that allows me to create credible conflict that doesn't scream 'railroad' like with the random vampires back in Albania, we'll see more about that in the next chapters, which should hopefully be a little easier (faster) to write.
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About Orion:
I need other minor characters to be present in the story before I make use of them, I don't want to create a character to solve a problem in the same chapter that problem is revealed, that'd be just bad planning on my part. So I'll present other secondary chapters here and there while I go on with the main plot.
In any case, I present you Orion Black, born in 1929, and said to be good at warding, the fandom states he was the one to provide Grimmauld Place with the mysterious wards that made the place ideal for being chosen as the Order's base. (And yes, Orion is Sirius father in canon)
I wanted to experiment by adding a character that isn't drawn by interest in Magic. I hope I managed to build a character that is different from my favorite standard, and I super-hope that the conversation that took place among Slughorn, Minerva, Rubeus, and Tom, managed to be smooth despite the vast amount of foreshadowing and lore that I've dropped into it.
Basing ourselves on canon, we can say that nothing is known about Orion's personality, so I'm going for a ruthless politician build. He's your typical pureblood, but in the interest of using somewhat known characters without dumping 50k words on their development, given the minor impact they'll have on the story, I'm giving him a pragmatic twist.
Hopes for his character and sub-plot? Ideas?
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About Tom:
I really wasn't sure what to do with him. I agree that he cannot accept 'not the best' as a state of being, but now the accessed the actual Secrets of the Chamber (which I was thinking of as a collection of Salazar's works) plus the Basilisk he has options to prove himself better than Hagrid without going full nuclear on the school.
So, I've foreshadowed a couple of things in this Arc , but we'll see them explode in the following chapters, and I've decided on some stuff to inject some much-needed adrenaline into this story. You'll see soon, I promise.
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About the Slug-Club:
I didn't want the standard dinner plus brownnosing start in the Slug-Club for our MC.
I hope I managed to give a clear picture of how intertwined his extracurricular activities are with his regular schoolwork, and I openly admit that I dislike how the chat with Hagrid-Riddle-McGonagall-Sughorn-Black went. It is extremely difficult to balance so many elements, exceedingly so with the 3rd person colored by Orion's opinions.
How did it go? I used it to touch several interesting Lore-related topics, as well as to inject some foreshadowing. Any ideas about how I can better manage this kind of meeting? There will be other 'round tables' going on with the story, even if I hope they'll have a clearly defined aim, instead of the random networking engineered by Slughorn.
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Mind Arts:
I used the brief mention of Mind Arts to clearly state why any problem can't be solved by the use of a Pensieve or a dose of Veritas Serum: I simply can ill tolerate all the fics in which those two are paraded as revolutionary instruments to solve the Death Eater out of Azkaban after the fall of Voldemort-debacle.
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If you like the story so far, please throw some power stones.
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