Hermione tried a few spells from the books she'd borrowed. Some of them worked – a little – most of them didn't. The plant she'd cast spells on flourished, while the one she kept as a control grew at a more normal rate. She'd also managed, with a very great deal of effort, to make a candle flame extinguish just by wishing it. So she knew it was real. She'd proved it! It would just take research and practice to improve.
She liked the idea of being a witch, and decided to learn what spells she could. But she also liked the idea of summoning a being to be her friend, just like her mother wanted. She talked about it with her dad, who seemed to have been informed of her new interest in magic by her mother, or possibly by Emily.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Dandelion?" he asked. It was his pet nickname for her, based on her frizzy mane of hair.
"Don't tell Mummy, because I want to surprise her, but I'm going to make an imaginary friend with magic."
"That's a fine idea. What kind of friend?"
"I was thinking maybe an angel or a demon?" she suggested hesitantly.
"Not an ordinary child?"
"Don't be silly, Daddy. You can't just summon a real child out of nowhere. It has to be a magical creature. Which type do you think I should pick?"
He smiled then assumed a serious, thoughtful look. "Well, as we're a family of atheists, I don't imagine angels would be very happy with us. Probably best to stick with a demon, I suppose. But make sure it's a friendly demon. You don't want a nasty one that would want to hurt people or one that's too scary."
Her daddy helped her get some magical tools together on Saturday. She could tell he didn't really believe it would work, but that was alright – she'd prove it all later when her demon showed up.
Mr Granger didn't want her to have a sharp knife to be her athame, but he did give her a silver cake-server. "It's rather elaborately decorated, and silver! So that makes it special," he said. "It's sharp enough to cut cake on one side, but not sharp enough to cut you. It was a wedding gift from Mummy's friend Renee, but I don't think we've ever used it. We're not very big on cake here, after all!"
"Except for birthdays," Hermione agreed. "Sweets rot your teeth."
They found a box of coloured chalk she could use for drawing magic circles, and Hermione promised to avoid drawing pentagrams, just in case it worried her mother, who'd been raised Christian before losing her faith in her teens. Her mother was still working at the dental clinic – she and Mr Granger alternated who took the Saturday morning shift.
"Now I need a goblet, and a magic wand," Hermione said. A decorative wineglass was found to be pressed into service as her Cup, but no magic wand was to be had at home. They had a lovely little garden full of flowers but it was small, and rather lacking in trees. Shrubs just wouldn't do.
"I'll make you a deal, Dandelion," her father proposed. "I'll take you to the park so you can hunt for a magic wand, but you have to play on the swings and slide for at least twenty minutes with other children. Of course you can make up your friendly demon when you get back, but you still have to leave time this evening for violin and maths practice. And if you're scribbling with chalk on your floorboards you have to clean it up yourself."
"Ten minutes on the playground?"
"Fifteen," countered her father.
"Deal," Hermione said gravely, and offered a tiny hand to shake.
-000-
Hermione had played obediently on the swings and other playground equipment for fifteen minutes, which wasn't so bad once she got started. There were some other kids there, but she just ignored them, and they ignored her. She was busy thinking about her wand.
Her father was sitting on one of the park benches, and looked up from his book to smile and wave as she wandered past, intently looking at the nearby trees and branches. It was quite a large park, but there weren't a lot of trees for her to choose from, really.
When she found a new type of tree, she laid her hand on the rough bark, closed her eyes, and tried to feel if it felt right in a magical kind of way, while listening to the gentle rustle of leaves in the wind. There was one tree that felt kind of extra special, but in the end she discovered it was actually the ivy on the trunk she liked best. That obviously wouldn't work for a wand – since it was mostly too thin and bendy, and if she tried to get the thickest bit it would really hurt the vine.
Eventually she found a small fallen oak branch she thought might do, and emptied out her thermos of water over the oak tree's roots as a thank you present.
"Did you pick your magic wand yet, Hermione sweetheart?" asked her father.
"Yes Daddy," she said, trotting over. "I liked the ivy best, but I don't think it would make a nice wand, which is a shame. I don't want to kill the plant to try and get a big bit of it anyway – that's bad for the magic. And against park rules. So I picked this oak branch – it seemed quite nice too."
"Maybe you could pick just a little bit of ivy, then wrap it around the base of your oak wand like a handle grip," her father suggested. "Ivy grows back fast – the plant won't mind."
Hermione brightened happily, then refilled her thermos at a water fountain. She gave the ivy a drink too. "Thank you ivy, I hope you don't mind me taking a little bit for my wand. Here's a drink of water for you. I'm sure you'll grow back fast." She tugged hard until a strand of ivy broke off, then went back with her prize to her dad.
"Be careful of the sap, just in case," he said warily. "Botany's not my area of expertise, but sometimes the sap is a problem and causes rashes, I think?"
Hermione worked on making her wand for a whole week, every afternoon at home. Emily was delighted about her young charge having a hobby that didn't revolve around reading for a change, and even helped her trim her branch to what Hermione decided was just the right length.
"It's a bit long," Hermione said thoughtfully while giving her wand a swish. "Can we cut it again?"
"I guess so," said Emily with a sigh, then got out the pruning shears again and snipped it to just under a foot long. "How's that?"
Hermione gave it another wave and the wand felt warm and happy in her hand. "Just right! It likes being this length." Emily gave her an indulgent smile and supplied her with some sandpaper to smooth over the rough places.
She was glad Emily was being nicer to her. She still wasn't going to tell her about how she really truly had magic powers, but she'd had to tell her about her magic wand. She wasn't allowed to use sharp tools on her own, and she knew you mustn't break the house rules.
Under Emily's supervision Hermione was allowed to carefully carve a "H" in the sawn-off handle end (there not being room to carve her whole name, as some books advised) with the repetitive scratching of the blade of an open pair of scissors. She trimmed off all the leaves, and tried winding the ivy around as a handle, but it kept falling off. Eventually the two of them decided she would need to glue it on, and some superglue was employed in the end to make it stay put.
Emily pretended to be interested in the "real magic" that Hermione was studying a couple of times, but Hermione wasn't fooled. She'd tried to show her nanny the magic squares of Agrippa and Paracelsus, which had all the numbers adding up to the same answer whether you read a row, column, or diagonal line, and Emily just got bored. Her mummy had thought they were very clever, and she knew Julia would have loved them.
Emily thought the pictures of demons in The Lesser Key of Solomon looked "gross". Admittedly, a lot of them actually did. Before she'd started her research, she'd thought demons were all supposed to look like red skinned men with goats' legs and horns, but lots of them in her books looked really weird. Like odd mixtures of two animals, or sea monsters, or birds with extra legs, holding swords.
But Emily was helpful, all the same. Like with how she'd helped her make her wand, and she proved useful and understanding again a week later when Hermione ran into trouble drawing her chalk magic circles on the floorboards of her bedroom.
Everything had been going all wrong, and nothing looked perfect like it should. Hermione had tried to draw all the little symbols inside the snake's body that coiled around the inside of the largest circle, but it wasn't a language she knew and she could tell they didn't look quite right. Then, to top it all off, she'd smudged them. There were so very many symbols to draw, and she'd gotten some of them right, but then she'd rested her hand on the design without thinking, and it all got smudged into a colourful chalky smear.
She'd thrown herself onto her bed with a loud sob, and buried her head under her pillow while she cried her heart out. She was never going to get it all right. It was too hard, and the books were too confusing and didn't explain things clearly, and some of them disagreed with each other and books shouldn't do that. Either something was right or it wasn't. She was never going to get her demon, and she'd told her Mummy her surprise would be finished by Sunday but now she was never going to get her magic circle done in time.
A soft knock at the door alerted her that Emily had come to check on her.
"Go away!" she yelled, voice thick with tears and anger. Emily came in anyway.
"What's wrong, Hermione?" she asked gently.
"Don't step on my magic circle!" she yelled, voice muffled by the pillow still firmly over her head. "You'll just ruin it more! It's ruined anyway, I can't do it!" She broke into sobs again.
"Is this Hebrew?" she heard Emily say.
"I don't know," she admitted, in a choked voice. "But it's too hard. And the picture I'm trying to copy is too small, and I don't know what it's supposed to look like, and it keeps smearing!"
The mattress rocked slightly as Emily sat down at the base of her bed and patted her foot. Hermione moved it away crossly. "I don't even know why it has to be in another language. Why can't it be in English?" Hermione complained, sniffling.
"It can be if you want it to be," Emily encouraged. "Just change it!"
"Then it wouldn't be like in the book!" Hermione said, outraged. Emily really was stupid sometimes.
"But it's magic," said Emily stubbornly. "Magic words can be anything you want them to be. It's all about how much magic power you have, and concentrating, and stuff like that. Lots of books have magic working differently. You can make up your own magic circle, the way you like it best."
Hermione was silent as she considered what she'd just been told. The books had disagreed with each other a lot. "It's not like science? There could be more than one way?" She peeked warily out from under her pillow. Emily was still sitting on her bed, smiling gently at her.
"That's right! It's more like music than science."
"You can't make up your own notes on the violin, though. You're either playing it right or you're not. I don't want to be off-key with my magic."
"But once you've got the basic notes practised, you can improvise with them, can't you? You don't only have to play the songs in the books precisely how they're written. And you can make up your own tunes."
Hermione thought about it. "But what if I get my magic circle wrong?"
"Then you try again until you think it looks right. What are you trying to do with your magical circle, anyway?"
"Don't tell Mummy, but I'm going to make an imaginary friend. A friendly demon."
"Not an angel or a unicorn or a dragon?"
"No, a demon. But he's a nice, friendly kind of demon who likes maths. I picked one very carefully. Don't tell Mummy – it's a surprise for her!"
Emily promised not to tell and then helped her clean up her magic circle so she could start over again. Hermione decided to keep the Magical Circle of King Solomon with the snake, to stand in to keep herself safe in case she made a mistake and the demon was a mean one. She redrew her second diagram too - the green Magical Triangle of Containment with a small circle drawn inside it to summon the demon into. She carefully coloured in the space around the snake yellow on her large circle, then she drew a red square in the centre to stand in and wrote "Friend" inside it. It seemed nicer than "Master", since she didn't want a slave. Slavery was wrong, everyone knew that.
She tried writing some English words around things, but it didn't feel very magic at all, and she frowned at her circle unhappily. Determination, research, and hard work. She shouldn't have expected to get it right the first time. She carefully rubbed out the writing with a damp paper towel, then tried again.
She had to tell her Mummy it was taking longer than planned, but thankfully she didn't mind. In the end it took her eight days before she had something she was satisfied with, but the circle finally felt like it hummed with anticipation. Magic! A proper magic circle. She'd kept the basic design the same, but substituted in some runes from The Hobbit instead of the Hebrew or English letters. They looked more magical but it took her a few goes to get ones that felt right, that clicked in just the right way. She drew them with determination, trying to wish them to work. She tapped her magic wand on each rune and sigil after she finished drawing each one, and sometimes it felt like a tiny spark of static leapt from the wand to the symbols, leaving her feeling a little drained and tired. She wished twice as hard while drawing the sigil of her favourite chosen demon inside the circle in the containment triangle. It felt perfect, and she just knew it was all going to work. It took a long time get everything done to her satisfaction, and she went to bed early for two nights in a row. Daddy worried she was sick when she didn't want to stay up late reading like usual, but she reassured him that she was just tired and that he needn't worry. Only her Daddy was allowed to check on her at nights all week – she didn't want Mummy to see her magic circle and guess at her surprise.
She'd worked on her summoning invocation at school at lunch times in the library, basing it partly off of books and partly what sounded appropriately formal and mystical, and was pretty happy with it. Finally she decided she was ready.
Late one Friday afternoon she had the bedroom door shut with childishly firm instructions to Emily not to bother her as she was casting her important magic summoning spell. Emily agreed to give her an hour on her own uninterrupted, which Hermione hoped would be long enough.
Hermione called upon the four elements, starting with earth to the north – she'd checked with Daddy's compass – then air, fire, and water going clockwise around the circle.
She called out her invocation firmly, filled with the unquestioningly firm belief of a young child, and the innate talent of witchcraft that she barely understood she possessed.
"Crocell! Duke of Hell, great and strong, I summon thee! Ruler of the forty-eight legions, I entreat thee to attend me!" She swished her wand around in what she hoped were nice magical gestures.
Crocell's goetic seal inscribed in green chalk in the magical triangle burst into light, then a shimmering form started to appear like a ghost made of heat haze while light swirled around the figure's feet like a whirlpool.
"I invoke thee, Crocell!" Hermione yelled excitedly, bouncing up and down in glee. "Appear before me!"
The light swirled upwards, faster and faster until it formed a tornado of light that stretched up to the ceiling, and encased the shimmering hazy figure. There was a noise like the ocean surf, or the crash of a waterfall, and the light fell away to reveal an angelic figure. A man with a short kilt-like robe wrapped around his waist, with deathly pale skin, dark green hair, and enormous feathery black wings with a tinge of satiny green to them, like a mallard duck.
But much more majestic than a duck, of course, she thought as she gazed at him, delighted and awed by her success.
He blinked in confusion, shifted around, and tried to stretch his wings. But they hit the edges of the triangle, or where the edges would be if they were extended up into the air. It was as if there was an invisible force field around him – his wings smacked against nothing and wouldn't go any further.
"I did it! I did it!" she cried out in glee.
He moved around awkwardly to face her, feet shuffling about in the cramped small circle she'd drawn, his voice booming with a weird sound like the rushing of waters. "Foolish mortal! None has dared call my name for centuries! Why have you summoned… me…" As he turned he trailed off as his eyes lit upon the small figure inside her own circle, ringed by a chalked snake and tidy circles of Norse runes.
Hermione waved happily to him. "Hello Crocell! It's nice to meet you, your grace." Her Halloween witch's hat almost slipped off, and she jammed it firmly back onto her head. His eyes looked weird – all black with no whites or irises. She decided that wasn't too scary, though. He was much more human looking and less frightening than most of the other demons she'd read up on.
"You are… tiny. Just a child. Have you been transformed, and wish to be restored to your proper form?" he asked. His voice sounded much calmer now, with undertones more like a gurgling river and less like angry rapids.
"No? This is how I look?" she said with confusion. "I have presents for you, if you want them? Thank you for showing up, I'm so happy you came! There's some copper sulphate from my science kit – I read you like copper. And I have a bottle of water, because you like water. I wasn't sure what green things you'd like, so there's an apple, and some pretty leaves from the garden, and a picture of a forest I cut from a magazine, and a bracelet my Nana gave me. It's only glass beads but I thought you might like it. I don't know if boy demons like jewellery, but I thought there was no need to make assumptions and you could choose for yourself. Mummy says we shouldn't bow to stereotypes."
"How old are you, little witch? Did you truly call me… on your own?!" the demon asked, sounding extremely sceptical.
"Uh… I'm eight years old. Almost nine. My birthday's in September," she answered politely, then looked back at the piece of paper with her invocation on it, trying to remember what came next. He didn't sound like a proper demon any more, and it was a little confusing. "Wait! I have notes! Umm… I entreat thee to guide me on the left-hand path, to be my friend, and to play geometry games with me and help me with my Maths homework. Please."
"You've called me… to teach you witchcraft and arithmetic, little witch?" Crocell's jaw was practically hanging open, he looked so shocked.
"And to be my friend?" she said hesitantly, looking shy and uncertain. "I would really like a friend. We could have tea parties? That's the main reason I called you, actually. Is that alright? Mummy said I needed more friends, and an imaginary one would do. But I thought a real friend would be better and you're sort of imaginary and sort of not? And can I be an 'enchantress' and not a 'witch'? It sounds nicer."
"You're a witch, I can tell by the taste of your magic. A Dark one, to be summoning demons. And a child, it appears. Tea parties." He shook his head in bemusement.
"Well obviously I'm a child, I'm only eight. Did you forget? You were supposed to be good at maths – that's what the book said. I really wanted a friend who's good at maths, and the book said you loved geometry and liberal sciences. Which apparently covers a lot of things I didn't think were sciences, and it's a lot like liberal arts and just means learning a whole range of things including grammar, maths, geometry, astronomy, and music. Do you like music? I play the violin. Do you want to be friends?"
He stood there, still looking astonished at her flood of babble, and her shoulders slumped at his lack of reaction. "I can send you home if you don't want to be. You don't have to. You're not a slave you know. It's alright to say no to something you don't want to do. If you don't like me we don't have to be friends. I know you're a grown-up and I'm not, but I'm quite smart for my age and I thought maybe you might like to visit, and maybe it would be nicer here than in Hell which sounds rather unpleasant and we could work on maths puzzles together."
"But you've imprisoned me in a magic circle," he said slowly, glancing down at her chalk lines, "which itself lies within Solomon's Triangle, though with an interesting choice of Anglo-Saxon or Norse magical runes around the edge – I can't quite make them all out from here. That wasn't a very friendly thing to do."
"How else was I supposed to get you here? The books were very confusing. I had to make a lot of stuff up because they argued with each other because demonology is an art and isn't a proper science even though it ends with 'ology', and the magic didn't feel right the first few times I was drawing my circles. I think I know how to send you home. But if you want to stay I'll let you out, if you promise not to hurt me. Do I have to abjure you, or can I just ask?"
His reply had given her a little hope that maybe he didn't want to leave right away. Maybe he would stay if they talked a bit more, and got better acquainted. Hermione chewed her lip and fidgeted nervously with her notebook, flipping through it for something to talk about with him. Crocell stared at her consideringly without answering her question right away, so she filled the silence with more chatter, anxious to please.
"The book I read said you were quite friendly for a demon. And that you like warm baths and water, geometry, liberal sciences, and the colour green. Is that all true? Do you not have hot water in hell, that you need to have magic powers to warm up baths? That seemed like an oddly specific power for a demon to have."
"An innocent witch child…" he mused out aloud, seemingly not paying a lot of attention to her litany of questions.
"I don't worship God, if that helps?" she offered optimistically. "Daddy thought you might be friendlier than an angel, given that we're atheists."
"It helps quite a lot," he said with a laugh, and she smiled toothily in relief. "For their host still frown upon my people's rebellion. I shall promise not to harm you during my visit today, little witch, if you let me out of this rather tiny Triangle. It should have been drawn larger, you know."
She jumped over the edge of her circle, careful not to smudge the chalk, and picked up her little tray of offerings. "I know. But my bedroom's quite small, and I didn't have room for a nine foot circle, plus another triangle for you to show up in. Hmm. Do you think I can hold your hand to help you out? Do you want your presents now? Apparently gifts are very traditional. I can't offer you my soul – Daddy says we don't have souls because they aren't real and personality is all based in the brain. My name's Hermione, by the way. Hermione Granger."
"Your father is a Dark wizard?" the demon asked, carefully taking hold of her hand, and stepping out of the circle. It was slow going, like he was wading through mud, but with her help he eventually emerged from his temporary imprisonment and stretched his wings out. They brushed against the striped blue wallpaper of one of her bedroom walls, and bumped against a model of the solar system hanging from the ceiling, making it clatter and spin about without breaking it.
"I don't think so, I've never seen him do any spells. I don't think he believes in magic, really. Why do you speak English? I mean, I'm not complaining because it's very convenient, but I was a little worried you might speak Latin. Or Old English. Do you know that languages change over time? I think that's very interesting. Why do you like geometry? Do lots of witches summon you?"
Crocell laughed at her, though it didn't sound mean like when Edward at school laughed at her. "You ask a lot of questions, though I suppose that is typical for those who summon us. Usually they wait for answers before asking the next question however. I speak the celestial language of the outer realms – I believe wizards call it 'Enochian', and it can be intuitively understood by all beings with magical power. I know that languages change, but it doesn't concern me in the slightest. I like geometry a great deal, for there is beauty in symmetry, and an understanding of mathematics is the foundation of understanding the whole of creation. I am very rarely summoned – I believe it has been a couple of hundred years since I was last called to the mortal realm by a wizard, and I did not enjoy the experience and do not wish to speak of it at this time."
"Thank you for answering my questions, your grace," she said politely. "Do you want to pick a present now?"
He looked over her little tray of offerings, hiding a smile. He gravely selected a bright green glossy leaf and a bottle of water, and she opened it for him when the screw top lid confused him a little. "I would be pleased if you would summon me again. I shall spend time with you and teach you geometry, astronomy, and the theory of music over the next ten years when called upon to do so. In exchange as your payment to me you shall vow to never summon me in a manner that imprisons or constrains me against my will, to never knowingly aid an angel, and to learn Dark magic spells from me."
Astronomy could be fun, she guessed. She only knew a little at the moment, but she enjoyed it quite a lot. Her part of the deal sounded harder. "What if the spells are too hard for me?" she fretted. "I tried a lot of spells from books, but only a few worked. And how do I call you without imprisoning you?"
"We shall amend the first vow to doing so only once you have learnt the proper methods, which I shall teach you as soon as possible. As for the latter, we can change it to 'attempt sincerely to learn Dark magic spells to the best of my ability'. Will that suffice?"
"That sounds good!" she said happily. And so it was that they clasped hands, and wind rushed around them as tongues of flame looped around their wrists as they made their respective promises. She worried it might burn her, but it only twinged a little and felt warm for a moment like when the heater was on very high.
"An Unbreakable Vow," said Crocell with satisfaction. "Should you begin an attempt to break your promises, the fire will burn at your wrists. Should you persist, you will die."
"I don't want to die!" she objected. "You didn't tell me that part!"
He seemed unconcerned. "Then don't break your promises. The penalty is the same for me, you know."
He pulled out her desk chair and sat while he lectured her on better ways to summon a demon. "By blood is the swiftest way if you're already known to one of us, and you know our name in turn - a small cut should suffice to empower your call," he told her. "The second method is by formally invoking a demon's name in a circle of power strengthened by runes. This is the best option for an unfamiliar demon. Call three times while drawing on your magical power, including all the demon's titles and yours. Remember you must leave a gap in the circle for the demon to exit through at will. And the last and most powerful method is by a death offering – a sacrifice of an animal in a demon's name."
Hermione made a disgusted face, poking her tongue out at the thought of it. "Ewww!"
"Oh stop that. Like most mortals I imagine you eat animal meat all the time, so I don't see why you're being squeamish about it. Don't you help your family with the butchering in autumn? No? Well, it's a very polite way to summon us that would empower us in doing so. You know, animals die all the time so that others may bring you their flesh to feast on – how is it any worse that we might enjoy sustenance too? And we're not half so messy – usually it is only the spiritual essence that we need to consume."
"I guess," she said grudgingly. He made good points. She wouldn't want to give up bacon or roast chicken just because an animal had to die to feed her. Why shouldn't demons like dead animals too? She wondered if animal spirits tasted good to demons, like crispy bacon rashers. She wondered if Daddy was wrong and souls really were real.
After their chat they worked on her maths homework together for a little while, and if his eyes glittered like obsidian, and his teeth were a little too sharp when he smiled, Hermione didn't mind too much because he praised her just like Julia used to – and her parents all too rarely did, always wanting her to do better – and even got excited over the trickier puzzles that needed logic to figure out just like she did.
"This is very advanced work for such a young girl, even for a young man from a prosperous family it would be impressive! I understand girls aren't usually tutored in arithmetic – you must be quite exceptional. Well done! You are very precocious, in both your intelligence and your magical skills," he said, looking over her worksheet.
"Girls go to school now too," Hermione explained. "Everyone has to. And it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, though some of the nicer schools are more expensive and harder to get into."
Emily's voice called from downstairs, "Hermione! Your parents are home! Time to come downstairs."
"Come on," said Hermione, leaping up and clasping his hand as she led him out of her room. "Come and meet Mummy and Daddy! They're going to be so surprised!"
Wilfredo retamal asked me a very good question. Why, if this fic is complete, am I updating weekly instead of posting it all at once?
This fic is most certainly complete (it will be 11 chapters, about 43K words), and I update piecemeal for a few reasons. Firstly (and most importantly for me), it gives my long-term followers something to enjoy for a couple of months while I work on writing other stories - so there's less time between new things being posted.
Secondly, it gets a story more hits and more reviews, and I love reviews! :) I try to reply to every single one.
Thirdly, if my readers say something interesting in a review I can respond to that, and possibly incorporate little ideas in upcoming chapters by tweaking them slightly. (And I can fix any typos they alert me to.)
Fourthly, it lets me provide a guaranteed update schedule, in a reliable way for my readers to enjoy, and in a low-stress way for me with no pressure to frantically write a new chapter in a week.
And lastly, for posting multi-chapter fics I prefer to have them COMPLETED before I start posting them, or at least half-finished with the ending plotted out. Because while I do read works-in-progress, I know not everyone does. There's far too many great stories out there on the 'net that trail off unfinished, never to be completed, and that's sometimes kind of sad when it's something you love. I don't want to inadvertently do that to my readers. I have a handful of half-written fics that I haven't posted anywhere, because what if my muse abandons me and they never get completed? That's my personal choice, but of course I respect it's not everyone's choice, and that's OK. I have many unfinished fics I love to read that I cherish just how they are – if they're never finished so be it.
Thank you to DarkQuartz for coming on board as my beta for the first two chapters, which have now been edited. She will be assisting me with future chapters as time and life commitments allow.