iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Yeuxverts

Musicology Duck @musicologyduck.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

I just woke up from a nap and somehow while I was asleep, everyone on the bus has figured out we are not going to the right place

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Process vid for Bloodtoll cover art (Much credit to Oliver Stummvoll for having an excellent jaw clench ref, Draco is very stressed out in this fic) archiveofourown.org/works/727275... #dramioneart #dhrart

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Reposted by Yeuxverts

Taco @thetacowrites.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Bloodtoll by @yeuxverts.bsky.social and Neilistic is up and it's a 500k rich Durmstrang Dramione fic. Mind the tags!

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

From Chapter 55 of The Lights That Burn (a little sad that this is the last one of these I’ll be doing). After this chapter posts on Sunday it’s just the epilogue left. archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: If You Know Heaven

Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.

The Art of War X.31.

Excerpt:

The road is long, and barren, and black. No light to guide him but a tideway of stars overhead, in a waltz without end. Nothing to see but the Stygian ribbon of midnight at his boot soles, laid over emptiness ahead as it rises to meet him.

For ages he walks, listening to the sound of his own footsteps, and the flux of his blood, and a breeze, dark and dreamy.

The breeze speaks, and its words become steps that match his own.

Excerpt:

She turns her head away for a moment and looks out at the dark edge of the world where light grows steadily.

The silhouettes of a pair of massive dogs chase each other in the distance, backlit against the broad expanse of a moon. It draws ever larger as it rises at the horizon line—bright and blinding in its beauty.

It’s a Worm moon. A Lenten moon. Maybe. Is it still March where she is? She senses it won’t be if she lingers much longer, and perhaps this moon will become all the moons.

Her dad gets to his feet and stretches out a hand to help her to hers. There is warmth there, and surety, and faith in her in his grip and things are caving in inside the chambers of her heart once again, at what she’s lost, in the face of having it for one moment’s breath.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

From Chapter 54 of The Lights That Burn archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Overthrow Their Kingdoms

Thus he is able to capture their cities and overthrow their kingdoms.

The Art of War XI.55.

Excerpt:
She wanted to touch him for as long as she possibly could.

There had been mornings like this at Montfort. A precious handful that she had wallpapered her memories with afterwards for years. Warm skin and soft sheets and the blushing light after dawn.

It was close to noon now, and the air was brighter and sharper. She skimmed her hands over him everywhere, both craving and reassuring, as though if she somehow made the contact real enough she could keep things like this forever. She would live inside this for the rest of her life.

Excerpt:
The demanding drag of lips that said you’re taking part of me with you—keep it safe.

His hands cupping her face and hers at the back of his neck and I need you I love you I’ll follow you.

The shared breath between them where her edges met his and We don’t get to know the end. There’s hope here in the margins.

And when she had kissed all the words she could kiss, and he had done the same, they each took a step away from each other, into the sun that fell bright on pampas grass, and blinked away into the quiet breeze.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

From Chapter 53 of The Lights That Burn, only a few more left! archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

$Chapter Title: A Single United Body We can form a single united body, while the enemy must split up into fractions. Hence there will be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole, which means that we shall be many to the enemy's few. The Art of War VI.14.$

Chapter Excerpt:
Draco awoke dozens of times. The cool light of the afternoon with her nose in his neck. The caramel glow at sunset and her elbows an insistence in his ribs. The dim, deep blues of late evening, breathing her hair in his face. Never quite able to leave her, even to sleep. He lingered at the cliff’s edge of consciousness, dragging her closer into his body at every opportunity and slipping in and out of a liminal awareness.

Chapter Excerpt:

They lay there for several moments, heartbeats the only sounds between them. He buried his face in the soft part of her between neck and shoulder and filled his nose with the scent of her.

He had missed the smell of sunshine.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Excerpt from Ch 52 of The Lights That Burn, on Sunday. This chapter was one that I figured out halfway through drafting was going to require me to reread most of the fic up through that point, and it ending up taking me weeks to write. archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter title: The Movements of the Stars

In every army, the five developments connected with fire must be known, the movements of the stars calculated, and a watch kept for the proper days.

The Art of War XII.12.

Excerpt:

He moved with a mechanical intention, as though his body had been made for this purpose. If he’d had wings he would have flown, but all he was equipped with was charms and bad ideas and the knowledge that he’d follow her into an inferno if she needed him to.

He threw himself over the edge of the balcony.

Excerpt:

This couldn’t be happening. Surely fate wasn’t so cruel as to see her returned to him for one frozen moment only to watch her die again.

It would have been Promethean in the magnitude of its punishment, although the depths of his guilt never ceased to whisper to him. *She was the stolen fire that you were never allowed to keep. Enjoy an eternity of being viciously ripped apart.*

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

From Chapter 51 of The Lights That Burn archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter title: To Crush An Army

Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm a city, or to assassinate an individual, it is always necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants…

The Art of War XIII.20.

Excerpt: He carried a passenger with him, in an oversized pocket of his cloak. One whose evil seeped and oozed into his pores, and burned the mark on his forearm. It made his nerves sting; made him gag. And yet it drew him too, and that was worse. Like the desire to claw one’s skin off to end an unbearable itch.

Another hour, maybe. He reminded himself that he could endure it for just one more hour, as he stepped through the shattered remnants of a door and over a razed threshold.

Excerpt:

He still had some time.

Right now the gears and wheels of Shacklebolt’s plans for the Palace of Westminster would be stirring. Pawns and rooks moving into position—munitions being cautiously laid. The first steps of careful infiltration that would allow the Order to advance further into the Ministry.

And elsewhere, five other sets of hands: donning cloaks, readying magical explosives, setting out on the same initial task as he.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Chapter 50 Excerpts from The Lights That Burn archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: A Most Important Element

Spies are a most important element in war, because on them depends an army's ability to move.

The Art of War XIII.27.

Excerpt:
She understood why both he and Kingsley had required this—no one in this scenario was ever going to fully trust the other—but to watch him inscribe his name was to comprehend how redundant it was. It was strikingly obvious from the nature of his own demands he had already fully committed himself to this path.

He’d bound himself more completely than a blood oath ever could.

Excerpt:
The first night she’d ever met him he’d reminded her of an ophanim. Of a dragon. All of that celestial ferocity was there in his face now.

“She was everything to me. She still is. She’s the last reason. The only reason. If I’m still breathing it’s only because I loved her enough to finish this for her.”

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

From Chapter 49 of The Lights That Burn, up on Sunday: archiveofourown.org/works/575963...

Chapter Title: Purposes of Deception

Having doomed spies, doing certain things openly for purposes of deception...

The Art of War XIII.12.

Excerpt: The floor around where he sat at the centre of the hearth rug was littered with several empty glass bottles. As she approached from behind she watched him stiffen; the reflexes he’d always wielded like a knife were dulled by those bottles’ former contents, but still dangerous.

He jerked his head around to look back at her and the flare of light that moved across his eyes was born and died in the time it took him to understand who she was. A passing meteor of comprehension that made him looked briefly cratered.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

It’s not Wednesday anymore, so WIP Thursday I guess. From Chapter 48 of The Lights That Burn archiveofourown.org/works/575963...

Chapter Title: His Own Secret Designs

Hence he does not strive to ally himself with all and sundry, nor does he foster the power of other states. He carries out his own secret designs, keeping his antagonists in awe.

The Art of War XI.55.

Excerpt: The contents of the dark, unoccupied house were not a surprise this time. She shouldn’t have felt the same wave of unanticipated sorrow as she wandered through it, turning on lamps as she passed them. And yet—somehow there was still a mournful thrum every time she noticed a bruise that his love for her had pressed into this place.

Excerpt: “I give you something, you give me something back.”

I’ll give you something. Give me something back.

The way his face melted into heartache he couldn’t quite hide hurt her. Her bones throbbed like they had during the long midnight she’d spent almost splinching her molecules apart over desert sand.

It looked like it was a monumental effort for him to move past it. To brush it off like what she’d said hadn’t just decimated him with memory.

His voice was rough. “What did you have in mind?”

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

From Chapter 47 of The Lights That Burn, up on Sunday (If you thought there was angst before…) archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: The Art of Handling

This is the art of handling large masses of men.

The Art of War VII.25.

Excerpt: Opening up the green front door and stepping into the dim still air inside that house was a cannonball right into several vital organs. If her nervous system had been operational enough to let her look down, she ought to have seen a smoking hole right through the centre of her. She couldn’t breathe.

He wasn’t here yet—he wasn’t waiting for her. But she was.

Her ghost was everywhere.

Excerpt:

Hermione had neither given him up, nor given up on him. She never would. She’d believed him when he’d told her it was the same for him. Some covenants, once formed, were not made for sundering.

*I won’t let you go. Not ever.*

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

From Ch 46 of The Lights That Burn archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: The Utmost Liberality

Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality.

The Art of War XIII.25.

Excerpt: They didn’t understand why she couldn’t let go of him. She’d been here two and a half years. Longer than the entire time she’d even known him, let alone the few months of happiness they’d had together.

She had thought it in her heart, when she’d made the decision to love him. That they would have made it ugly. And they did.

Excerpt: Somewhere, far off, a night heron called against the quiet susurrus of the shoreline.

“…he was very, very scared for me. For a long time,” Lily whispered into the dark.

In her head she heard echoes of that same whisper. A hundred small moments of Draco’s terror for her, and the things men did for love, and for fear.

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Reposted by Yeuxverts

Landbeorht @landbeorht.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Soft Veela Draco and Hermione drawing from magma #dhrart #dramione

Illustration of Veela Draco holding Hermione - nudes

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Kicking off Part IV of The Lights That Burn with bits from Chapter 45 — VERY SPOILERY for the end of Part III FYI archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Crossing A River

After crossing a river, you should get far away from it.

The Art of War IX.3.

Excerpt: If you say you’re mine then you’re mine. I won’t let you go. Not ever.

She missed him all the time. It was a constant, unending, unbearable ache that she nevertheless bore. She missed the bite of autumn in her nose when she breathed in around him. She missed soft nothing words and low everything words from the other side of a pillow. She missed touching him. Running fingers through his hair and hands across the hard planes of his body. She missed being touched too. She hadn’t really been touched in a long time.

Excerpt: It was hard for her, sometimes, being in a place that was untouched by things that had stained her heart with black ink. She felt like the stain here. The ever-present reminder—a mascot of what all of the rest of them were meant to be fighting for. There were certainly other escaped slaves in Alexandria, but not many. Not enough. It kept her apart in too many ways. Still. Even in a place that was meant to be freedom.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Chapter 42 of The Lights That Burn (up Sunday). One of those *the* chapter sort of chapters… archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: The Force of the Flames

When the force of the flames has reached its height, follow it up with an attack, if that is practicable…

The Art of War XII.8. (3)

Excerpt: Hermione didn’t need to be hauled out before it on her knees. There was no kicking and screaming, and no stopping what was coming either. She left the dark of her cave mouth to go greet ten thousand wizards who would savour her end with her chin up.

Excerpt: But there was nothing that could have prepared her for the Roar. The noise of an impossible, unfathomable number of people who demanded satisfaction for the worst sin she could have ever committed.

To be born into this world with a new magic was unforgivable. The generative seed of power buried in her heart and her hands at her birth was unexpected. It was novel and bore the breath of life within it. It created.

And they despised it, and her, because what they carried within themselves was stale and dusty and dying. It was not an animating magic. It didn’t grow or sustain or nourish. The thing it did best was destroy.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

A little bit from Chapter 41 of The Lights That Burn, where things are looking grim (updates on Sunday) archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Survive

Place your army in deadly peril, and it will survive…

The Art of War XI.58.

Excerpt:

It was just past 4:00 AM on June 21st—the longest day of the year.

Events with dragons always started right after sunset—she guessed she had approximately seventeen and a half hours left to live.

Excerpt: Death was a presence here. It waited patiently. It had come to claim this creature and now it paused. Propped up a wall. Crooked a finger. It did not require haste—it had no need to come to her. She’d be dragged before it on her knees by this evening.

Draco was going to return to a house late tonight and find it dim and silent as this tomb.

Late. The word ricocheted around the corners of her brain. Late hours and late, departed loved ones and too late to matter.

There would be nothing he could do. No one was coming for her.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

…and the slightly more sfw version: thank you dragon patronus tail for being so accommodating. archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dramione #dhr #dramioneart #dhrart

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Art I did for Chapter 37 of The Lights That Burn archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dramione #dhr #dramioneart #dhrart

Image described in excerpt in threaded text below

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

A bit of Chapter 40 of The Lights That Burn (up on Sunday) 🫣 archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: What He Holds Dear

Forestall your opponent by seizing what he holds dear.

The Art of War XI.66.

Excerpt: The door opened and she heard a familiar, clipped stride and saw a flash of silver in the corner of her eye and for one half of one moment she felt safe, and warm, and intact again. Draco had fixed it. He’d come back; everything was going to be alright.

The second half of that moment was akin to expecting a kiss and receiving a gut punch.

Draco was physically so much like his father.

Excerpt:

He stared pitilessly at her and the soulless sire hung above him offered up a resounding echo. She couldn’t have moved, even if she wasn’t glued in place. The only thing her brain could do was scream don’t twitch don’t blink don’t breathe.

He steepled his hands and narrowed his eyes, and she was an insect pinned on a wall.

“I don’t believe my son has ever made a worse bargain in his life.” He spoke into the silence in the room.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

I am a couple chapters behind on The Fire That Remains (currently in The Writing Pit™️) but it is so, so great so far and going some amazing places

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Chapter 39 excerpt from The Lights That Burn (up on Sunday) archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: The Dead

…nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.

The Art of War XII.21.

Chapter Excerpt:

There could have been—*there had to have been*—a way for her to do what the Order wanted and still consider all the angles.

She didn’t accept that it was a paradox. That some things were mutually exclusive.

*You don’t get to have everything you want.*

*Maybe you don’t get to have anything.*

Chapter Excerpt:

*What did you do when all your blueprints were ash?*

It had been a very long climb out of a very deep hole. He’d had time to think while he slotted fingers and toes into cracks in his well. While he dragged all the heaviness of a decimated psyche up slippery, sheer rock.

There was an absence there now. No plan. All his careful machinations up in smoke and utterly useless to him with one single flare of a floo.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

An itty bit of Ch 38 of The Lights That Burn, new chapter on Sunday archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Night-Fighting

In night-fighting, then, make much use of signal-fires and drums

The Art of War VII.26.

Excerpt: Sometimes the portent of war is a signal-fire. A pocket-sized flame bearing a message.

*****

The burning two-pence in her pocket read ‘Downstairs’ and her stomach plummeted.

Excerpt:
Sometimes the portent of war is a drum. The sonorous, deliberate pounding on a door.

*****

She gasped awake, curled in the same uncomfortable position from which she’d dropped into sleep sometime well after dawn.

She’d slept all day. It was late afternoon now.

Mary was knocking, repeating her name. Hermione threw an Alohomora at the doorknob, with the full awareness of what was about to happen.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

From Chapter 37 of The Lights That Burn (updates on Sundays) archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Divine Manipulation of the Threads

This is called "divine manipulation of the threads." It is the sovereign's most precious faculty.

The Art of War XIII.8

Chapter Excerpt: He cleared his throat. “As it happens, you were correct.”

“Mmhmm,” she agreed absently, still engrossed in the whatever she’d just written. She paused and looked up at him and he absorbed the dizzy force her eyes sometimes carried. Pools in a forest—deep and dark.

“But about what in particular?” She smiled and then he needed a moment to recover.

“You do need a very old, very large library.”

And then he was back with her, his wand clenched in one hand, while the other drifted along the swell of her hip, the dip of her waist, the curve of her breast, the line of her neck. And all the while she kept fingers on the pulse of his mind, staring out of his eyes and back into her own, while he did the same.

He thought about a different kind of warmth this time. How she had a burning star inside her—the light of an entire sun. And when he kissed her, sometimes the sun was in him too.

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Reposted by Yeuxverts

orolin @orolinerin.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

🥰🥰🥰

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Reposted by Yeuxverts

orolin @orolinerin.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Anything by Neilistic, she writes amazing Seamus. You’ve already been linked Sacrilege but also these two: archiveofourown.org/works/550537... archiveofourown.org/works/59673913

archiveofourown.org

Tenderheart - Chapter 1 - neilistic - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

A bit from Chapter 36 of The Lights That Burn (update on Sunday) archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Days of Rising Wind

…for these four are all days of rising wind.

The Art of War XII.4.

Excerpt: When he smiled it was a slow thing, like a cloud meandering out of the path of the sun, and suddenly she was blinking before she even knew why.

But when he laughed…She’d only heard it once—a shadow of this one, in the kitchen—and it had been like spending years underground and then emerging to the most spectacular sunset she’d ever seen. And then it was over, and night fell, but nothing could matter less, because for a few seconds she’d owned colours that weren’t even supposed to exist.

Excerpt: “I’ve used a few others before too. Nothing has ever felt quite right. Never sparked, you know? But it does feel so good.” The words bubbled out from the pit of her stomach where she kept the embers of her magic.

“Let me make you feel good then.” He fixed her with a look that reminded her of the black centre of a flame and then handed her his wand.

She swallowed at the sudden tide of want. “What should I do with it?”

“Whatever you want.”

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Never not shouting about my dramione!wife, forever alpha, sometime cowriter and general favorite person Neilistic (whose talent, hilarity and facility with rarepairs is an eternal treat). This Pansmione was a delight.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Excerpt from Chapter 35 of The Lights That Burn archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Liberty of Movement

Ground on which each side has liberty of movement is open ground.

The Art of War XI.5.

Excerpt: She was heat-seeking. She treated him like she’d treated the sun the whole day, advancing after it slowly. He woke partially a dozen times that night, her nose pressed into the space below his jaw, or her body trying to tunnel into his side. Each time he would gently roll her over and scoop her back into his arms and then she would burrow backwards against him, with a sigh of contentment so profound the rest of creation exhaled with her.

It was not an uninterrupted sleep. It was not particularly restful. But then, he hadn’t slept peacefully in years. He didn’t miss it. Not if he could have this.

Excerpt:

“Enough ‘latitude’ to get away with murder in broad daylight?”

He only raised a brow at her.

Alright.

“And the witnesses? No one will say anything? It won’t have been in the paper?”

“I know how to have something properly covered up.” At this he sounded offended, like she was questioning his professional competence.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

From Ch 34 of The Lights That Burn, up on Sunday archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Facing The Sun

Camp in high places, facing the sun.

The Art of War IX.2.

Chapter Excerpt: They had drifted apart from each other in sleep and now he was drawn across the ribbon of bedsheet between them—toward her like an Accio. He couldn’t help it. He could never help it with her. He had this need to bask in her like a compulsion. He was like a dog looking for a warm spot of floor.

Chapter Excerpt: She smiled sleepily, shifting further onto her back and lifted her hand as though to run it through his hair as he made his way down her upper arm. Instead she made a few balletic motions with her fingers and briefly shut her eyes and he watched as seventeen freckles he had so recently dragged his lips over gently realigned themselves. One up, a few over, several in small clusters, each a star in a constellation he had known almost as long as he’d known his own name.

He didn’t have the words.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

!!! One of my favorites in the whole fic 🚨❤️‍🔥

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

A little bit from Chapter 33 of The Lights That Burn, which was one of my favorites to write (Updates on Sundays) archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Cohesion

When invading hostile territory, the general principle is, that penetrating deeply brings cohesion…

The Art of War XI.42.

Excerpt: It was a good kiss. A long kiss. A *starving* kiss.

It was the kiss of creation. She had the vapour of those blue flames within her and he was the leftover dust of constellations and when they collided she thought *stars are born this way*.

Excerpt: He liked to give her things. Beautiful things. Books and cloaks and telescopes. A rich boy who’d been told his entire life that the only things that mattered could be bought. And then he’d set his life down, and his pain, and tucked them underneath the pile like an afterthought.

He was in her palm, cradled right between life line and heart line, and she saw it now. She remembered once thinking that he was not a safe person to care about. She saw the stinging irony of that now.

She wasn’t either.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

From Chapter 32 of The Lights That Burn up Sunday. Sorry about the cliffhanger…this probably won’t help? archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Critical Ground

When you leave your own country behind, and take your army across neighbourhood territory, you find yourself on critical ground.

The Art of War XI.43.

Chapter Excerpt: She did have enough time to understand what was happening though. To feel the bitter irony of having assured Malfoy she would return soon. The implied guarantee that nothing bad would happen to her. She had forgotten that she didn’t get to promise things like that. That sometimes all it took was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Catching the eye of the wrong pureblood. Allowing herself one moment of happiness.

Looking happy was unforgivable.

Sometimes life was just horrifically unfair.

Chapter Excerpt: They were average-looking. No one she’d ever seen before, only the embodiment of a thousand purebloods before them and thousands to follow. Their faces were a blend of every entitled, indulged narcissist she’d ever met and ever would meet. They were not special, because cruelty was not special. They were not novel, because atrocity was not a novelty.

Not to her.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

A little bit of chapter 31, from The Lights That Burn, up on Sunday archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Trusted

…without restrictions, they will be faithful; without giving orders, they can be trusted.

The Art of War XI.25

Excerpt: She took a deep breath. “Can we—can we do something? Like we’ve done before? I’ll give you something. Give me something back.”

He opened his mouth to speak and she cut him off before he could, trying not to sound like she was begging.

“Ask me whatever you want to know. I can’t—I can’t promise I’ll tell you everything.” There were still secrets that weren’t hers to share. “But I promise not to lie. If you’ll do the same.”

Excerpt: He still couldn’t really understand it. How she had crept up on him, winding herself into his insides like the weeds she meant to mimic. He had been a man who knew categorically that there was nothing special about her. Nothing singular. Nothing *magical*. And then one day he had looked around and not known that man at all. Was it still considered creeping up if he watched it come the entire way?

There was nothing like her. She was nothing *but* magic.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Priest Draco, my beloved. (Just in case you need more fucking in a confessional in your life)

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Nothing like a character finding out they actually have to do the hard thing and keep living

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

I really adore how there is this slow spread of more and more light into his life over the years

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Kicking off Part III of The Lights That Burn with Chapter 30 on Sunday archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: A Stubborn Front

If they are in hostile country, they will show a stubborn front. If there is no help for it, they will fight hard.

The Art of War XI.24.

Chapter Excerpt: She opened her eyes.

It looked like her room. It was lit only by a gibbous moon.

Two moons. Silver hair in the corner of her eye reflected almost as much light.

It was his steady fingers on the pulse at her neck.

Her eyes made reluctant, halting steps toward his own. There was something—something important she was forgetting—but she knew it was going to be waiting there.

Chapter Excerpt: “You won’t end up in an arena. I won’t accept that. Your life matters to me.” He paused to underscore just how little he was willing to fuck about on that front before he continued. “And even if me saving it wasn’t enough to convince you of that, I think it at least entitles me to—”

“Oh, fuck your entitlement!” she bit off. “You might get my body and my time and my labour and my life. You might think you own all that. But you don’t own me. Not really. You don’t get to have my soul. That one is mine.”

“Fine!” he roared. “Take better fucking care of it then! You are not allowed to die! Do you hear me?!”

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

This is, I think, probably the most acccurate and succinct way to summarize chapter 24 😂

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Panda is an absolute gem and has this ability to elevate already gorgeous words to complete brilliance

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Heist!Chapter (28), The Lights That Burn, this Sunday archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Black

There are not more than five primary colours (blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever be seen.

The Art of War V.8.

$Chapter Excerpt: One step forward, two steps back. An eternal refrain. She and Malfoy returned to speaking through fading footsteps and absent glimpses. The constant waltz of retreat exhausted her. She was angry about it, but he was clearly inches away from fracturing himself over what had happened and she didn’t have the energy to solve it on her own. Something else important was happening. The plan was precise, but not complex. The Order had gathered enough information to get them into the former Ministry building, and hopefully not get them killed.$

Chapter Excerpt: ‘Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.’

She emerged out of an emerald blaze into an atrium taller and vaster than she ever could have envisioned. In its heyday it had to have been truly spectacular. Even as faded as it was, it still held echoes of its former glory. Massive barrel vaults clothed in deep green tiles arched above her head as she took in the ominous volume. It had the dry taste to it of something long uncared for. The staleness of a place that had been abandoned a long while. It felt both lonely and dangerous.

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Reposted by Yeuxverts

ao3 tags @ao3struggles.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

tag limit management has been a NIGHTMARE

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

From Chapter 27, The Lights That Burn, this Sunday archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: A Delicacy of Honour

There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general:…(4) a delicacy of honour which is sensitive to shame

The Art of War VIII.12.

Excerpt: As he placed his hand on the doorknob he had the horrifically ill-timed thought that this conversation could have been worse.

The voice to his back agreed. And then it rectified things.

“Did you think I’m not aware of what’s occurring in my own house?”

Draco closed his eyes slowly, his hand still at the knob.

Excerpt: He had made a mistake. One he had known was a mistake from the beginning. As he’d stood there ankle deep he had stopped every few inches to marvel at his own stupidity. And soon he’d been in it to his knees, awed at the staggering folly of it all while he continued to shovel. Now he was up to his neck and still stunned every moment by it.

He had shown his father his guts. He’d forgotten he didn’t get to have weaknesses. He had allowed himself to forget, and now she was going to pay the price.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Chapter 26 — The Lights That Burn, for this upcoming Sunday archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: The Enemy’s Camp

Surviving spies, finally, are those who bring back news from the enemy's camp.

The Art of War XIII.13.

Chapter excerpt: She saw a man slip his hand gently along the back of a woman’s wrist and thought about Draco. She couldn’t stop thinking about him.

There were threads between them now. There had been an exchange of broken shards.

She thought about what he had told her about hope. The way her heart had stopped when he had told her she had more of it than anyone he’d ever met. The way he looked at her now. The way she looked back.

She thought about it for much, much too long.

Chapter excerpt: He was occluding like mad, wearing all of his different society disguises in turn, and still somehow doing a terrible job at concealing his focus. Or maybe it only seemed that way to her, so in tune with him by now.

He was being much too blatant about his concern that something might happen to her here. Again. She would have removed herself elsewhere but she was afraid to leave his sight lest he make himself even more obvious and follow after her.

It would have been a mistake. He was not the only one being overt in his observation.

His father had already noticed.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Chapter 25 of The Lights That Burn, this Sunday archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: The Sun and Moon

…like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew

The Art of War V.6.

Chapter excerpt:

Maybe if it hadn’t been approaching New Year’s Eve…It was an abysmal time of year. Always.

A thin time.

Things tended to slip past her walls while one year faded into the next.

Or maybe if she’d grown up in a magical household.

She might have known what to expect then.

Or if she hadn’t decided to clean the upstairs bedroom that day. Hardly anyone went up there unless they had to.

Or.

Or.

Or.

It might not have happened.

But it did.

Chapter excerpt:

He drew a breath to ask her lightly what could possibly have put her into such a state and stopped, his guts flash-freezing before his brain even caught up.

Something roiled.

He tugged his eyeline over to her own very slowly, like if he could learn how to freeze time in the next second he wouldn’t have to ask this question. They wouldn’t have to do this. She wouldn’t have to say and he wouldn’t have to know.

“Granger.” The words were soft. Too soft. A lure and a trap and he didn’t know any other way to be.

She shut her eyes like she could stop him. She knew.

“Who was that man?”

When she opened them again they were the bleakest things he had ever seen. She had the loveliest eyes. Firewhisky eyes. They weren’t supposed to look like that.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Chapter 24 of The Lights That Burn, up on Sunday (A little more spoilery than usual, but it’s Christmas) (Or it was, pretend this is Wednesday again) archiveofourown.org/works/575963... #dhrwipwednesday

Chapter Title: Available For Our Service

Thus they will become converted spies and available for our service.

The Art of War XIII.21.

Chapter excerpt:

“No.” Malfoy was raspier than he had been minutes prior. “Bite your lip instead.”

Oh.

She felt that like a controlled blast. Like someone deliberately taking out her foundations. There was a pit of molten lava below her and her insides were slowly caving into it. Her stomach was already melted. Her rib-bones were next. She was seconds away from structural collapse. She bit into the softest part and he fixed her with the sort of stare that broke things.

Chapter excerpt:

“Don’t be stupid,” she whispered into his ear. “And thank you.”

She took his face and kissed him—brief and hard and full of five thousand other unspoken words.

“Merry Christmas, Malfoy.”

She was back out the door again before she could let either of them ruin it. She missed the heartbreaking look on his face as she left.

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Yeuxverts @yeuxverts.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

This trailer for The Lights That Burn was made for me by thistlethread — it’s been a couple days now and I still can’t get over it, it is SO STUNNING💚💚💚 archiveofourown.org/works/575963... (Part 1 since apparently videos have to be less than 60 seconds)

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