So, I have a project. I've never had a real project on ff.n before, so who knows how frequently I'll update. Anyway, I figured I'd post it to this account, since it's sort of my "clean" one (meaning, it only has the very very best of my favorite stories. check out disallowed to see 230 others).

The Project: To Cast the Weighted Die

I adore two things in an HP fanfiction: LV/HP with bottom!Harry, and well-developed, character-rich, extremely AU AU. TCWD has/is both.

Some notes on the premise:

Matches: All powerful wizards/witches have magical "matches"; in other words, someone whose power compliments, completes, balances, and increases their own. They only get one match per lifetime, and they will usually find each other once they start "displaying" (my modification of JKR's accidental magic, with the addition of aura development and flaring) at around 16-17 years old. Before then, they have the traditional wand magic that is taught at Hogwarts in canon HP. Matches are usually part of the same generation; however, there are instances where one member will have to wait decades for their other half, during which time their magic becomes increasingly unstable. Unless the waiting member is clever enough and powerful enough to control their magic, they go insane and die before their match is born.

Post-magical war, AU England: I'm adjusting the timeline of HP canon for this story so that Grindelwald was still around when Voldie first began stirring. The idea is that Grindelwald and Voldemort teamed up, but Grindelwald waged the actual war, and Voldemort waged the political war (in other words, began winning high-profile politicians, purebloods, business men, etc to The Dark Side and infiltrating the wizarding and, to a lesser extent, muggle governments of European nations and the United States). This means that WWII, which I'm assuming Grindelwald was involved in, happened in the 1960's (Voldie was born in the 1940's). Sometime during all the chaos, the muggles became aware to a minor degree of the existence of magic. Society, both magical and muggle, is falling apart; poverty is rampant, criminal organizations play the role of a government, the orphanages are over-run, there isn't enough food, and radiation from magical battlefields is causing disease in muggles.

After Grindelwald was defeated by his match, Dumbledore (lets say the year was about 1972), Voldemort disappeared. He maintained contact with his connections in Europe and eventually ended up in Russia, where he met 16 year old Hesperus Black, heir to the House of Black and genius student at one of the most prestigious magical universities in the world, the Moscow College of Sorcery (1977). Hesperus was the magical match Voldemort had been waiting a very, very long time for.

Magical schools: Parents enroll their children into a magical school at a very early age, at which point a marker is put on the child's magic. The marker is detected by "the pulse", a magical signal radiated from their country's ministry, and they are contacted by a representative of the school. The pulse also detects the magic of children who have not been enrolled in the school and logs their power levels; prior to the war, those children whose power levels were unusually high were admitted to the school on scholarship, but now only the ones who have been registered are contacted. There is no such thing as a muggleborn; all magical children are ultimately from magical families, and all magical families are tracked in logbooks at magical ministries.